NOW THEN. ALISON LAMBERT. ADAM CURTIS. JEHST. A MAGAZINE FOR SHEFFIELD. ISSUE 39. FREE.
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NOW THEN 39 // JUNE.
We aim to cultivate choice, voice and responsibility by providing a platform for independent art, trade, music, writing and local news. We support Sheffield’s economy by only working with independent traders, community groups, charities and local government.
Another absolute corker for you this month. We’ve got an interview with filmmaker Adam Curtis, probably best known for The Power of Nightmares, The Trap and The Century of Self. He is fantastically outspoken on pretty much any subject you care to name, and the decision to interview him on the day of the Royal wedding was an interesting one.
p.5 Localcheck.
But that’s not all. We’ve also bagged a chat with producer and rapper extraordinaire Jehst, who has a new record coming out on his own YNR Productions label at the end of this month. It’s been a long time coming and we’ve wanted him in the mag since day one, so it’s good to finally give the man the page space he deserves.
p.14 27b/6.
Continuing on from our more fine art inclined mag last month, this month’s submission is from Alison Lambert, who has years of experience exhibiting her pieces across the country. A real pleasure.
p.34 Alison Lambert.
Oh, and don’t miss Peace in the Park on 4th June at the Ponderosa Park.
p.42 Live.
Almost all articles published in this magazine are written by members of the community, not professionals. If you don’t like what you read or have something that needs to be said, get in touch. Your opinions make Now Then what it is.
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WORDLIFE. JOE KRISS. TONY WALSH. PAUL TOBIN. SARAH THOMASIN. CONTRIBUTORS. ALT-SHEFF. DOUG PYPER. SAM WALBY. 27B/6. MEDIA LENS. MATT JONES. TOM BELSHAW. GORDON BARKER. IMOGEN DECORDOVA. PETE MARTIN. PETE HAZELL. BEN DOREY. ADAM KAY. FRED OXBY. NIGEL MPHISA. M.D.J. FILMREEL. JOÃO PAULO SIMÕES. ALEX KEEGAN.
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Community radio.
p.7
Privacy.
p.11
Adam Curtis.
Gagging on Super-injunctions. All Watched Over By Machines of Loving Grace. Team building.
p.19
Media Lens.
You Cannot Kill An Ideology With A Gun.
p.22 Wordlife.
Tony Walsh / Paul Tobin / Sarah Thomasin. Emotion and expression.
p.41 Sound.
The wretched odyssey of the muso. 65days / Kong / Gang Gang Dance / Wild Beasts.
p.44 Albums.
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no one expects the spanish revolution.
Amon Tobin / Efrim Manuel Menuck / Fleet Foxes / Young Montana?
Sam.
p.46 Jehst.
Not your Postman.
p.48 Under the Stars. An expanding constellation.
p.50 Filmreel.
Spliced Memories Part 1 / 13 Assassins.
The views expressed in the following articles are the opinion of the writer(s) and not necessarily those of Now Then magazine. Enjoy the read. Printed at Evolution Print. evolutionprint.co.uk We recycle all possible materials with recyclingrevolution.co.uk.
NOW THEN.
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arcadia (2011)
alison lambert
Proper PHOTO: JOHN COEFIELD
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You could sail through any city and never experience one particularly invisible part of its culture - the radio stations. People who don’t surf the airwaves miss out on a deep sea of local programmes, especially here in Sheffield. It wasn’t always so. Way back when the Britannic BBC Empire ruled the airwaves, it had to be challenged by brave pirate radio, broadcasting from ships just outside UK waters. This direct action brought pressure for a sea change and commercial radio was launched. At last! Variety, competition, the counter-culture... Ah yes... that was the dream that died. With few exceptions, mainstream radio stations all occupy the same tiny part of our cultural headspace. The latest scheming scandalism of Lady GaGa gets replayed on every music show and picked over on every talk channel. We’re close to returning to a tedious 1950s style monoculture. Think about this. How many times do you switch on the radio and hear a non-English language song? Not often, is it? We don’t realise how the broadcast media are dominated by content from the West - i.e. the USA and its English-speaking friends. The latest celebrity press releases are farmed out endlessly, from Chile to China, but do we hear about China or Chile’s celebs? American and British authors are massively translated into other languages but there’s a near-silence in the other direction. What ideas are bouncing around in, say, Nigeria? We don’t hear that. Instead we’re fed slick PR and dumbed-down news in bullet points.
Where’s all this leading? This month Alt-Sheff would like to hoist a flag for Sheffield Live! This hyper-local community radio station is our own treasure trove of audio gems. It’s quirky, it’s staffed by volunteers, and it offers various accents and flavours. It’s got massively long trailers between presenter change-overs. It doesn’t always get things right, but that doesn’t matter. It’s abundantly full of life, real in a way that slimysmooth commercial stations can never be. Radio Sheffield (bless it) sounds bland in comparison. You can listen to Sheffield Live! on 93.2FM, or live online, or download the programme after it has been broadcast. There’s a good chance you’ll hit a slot that’s not in English when you first tune in, but don’t be put off. Dip in and out. The international music selection is a real breath of fresh air and there’s plenty of English spoken along with news from the various other cultures in our community. Check out the website for the full schedule and you’ll soon find the programmes you like best. One favourite is Communities Live, for discussion of what’s happening. It’s amateur and we love it. By the way, if you’re out for fun this June and July, don’t forget that the major free and community festivals are all listed on Sheffield’s alternative website, Alt-Sheff, with lots of other good things in between. More of our favourite activities. Loads of people getting out and doing stuff - not for money but for fun and good causes. From Abbeyfield to Woodseats, Broomhill to Firth Park, not forgetting Pride, the Green Fair and Tramlines. Go on, surprise yourself. Share yourself out! We all live in communities, so why not enjoy it? Otherwise where would we all be? Alone in our rooms, slowly glazing over in front of the TV or PC screen? Happy days! alt-sheff.org.uk sheffieldlive.org
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PRIVACY.
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Gagging on Super-injunctions. Doug Pyper.
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The opinions expressed by the media and politicians about super-injunctions are both inaccurate and self-serving. Whenever judges are accused of interfering in matters best left to Parliament an alarm is triggered in the corner of my mind. Judges are, on the whole, extremely sensitive to the sovereignty of Parliament. Thus, when David Cameron describes his uneasiness about judges “creating a sort of privacy law… rather than Parliament” [1] and the media vents ire about judicial activism, I find myself needing to quiet that siren with the soothing balm of reason. The reporting of the super-injunctions issue is awash with inaccuracy, so it is necessary to begin by outlining how we came to have “a sort of privacy law”. Privacy in English law has developed substantially since the Human Rights Act took effect in 2000. The Act gave domestic legal effect to the European Convention on Human Rights, which we signed in 1950 after World War II. Article 8 of the Convention provides a right to ‘private and family life…home and…correspondence’. Article 10 provides a right to freedom of expression. When the two rights conflict, they need to be balanced against each other, and the Human Rights Act provides guidance to assist with this. Section 12(4) requires the court to have particular regard to the importance of Article 10 where ‘it is, or would be, in the public interest for the material to become public’. Super-injunctions arose to protect Article 8 rights. They are ‘interim non-disclosure orders’ (it was the Guardian that coined the term ‘super-injunction’) that temporarily prevent the reporting of the existence of an injunction or the details of court proceedings until the case is over. Notwithstanding the view encouraged by the media, super-injunctions are exceedingly rare. Last month Lord Neuberger delivered the Report of the Committee on Super-Injunctions, which showed that only two super-injunctions had been granted since January 2010. This is how the report described their function: ‘…the temporary secrecy provided by a non-disclosure order is required and justified where, without it, the court would not be capable of fulfilling its primary constitutional duty of doing justice. As Munby LJ has said, the absence of secrecy ‘in such circumstances (would be likely) to lead, directly or indirectly, to a denial of justice’. The use of non-disclosure orders in such cases is entirely sensible, justified and unobjectionable as long as, and only insofar as, they provide a form of shortlived, temporary secrecy which lasts no longer than strictly necessary.’
What Cameron and the media fail to mention when they criticise the judiciary is that Parliament has had ample opportunity to guide the application of privacy laws. In an authoritative survey of privacy law [3], Hugh Tomlinson QC observes that Private Members Bills concerning privacy were introduced to Parliament in 1961, 1969 and 1989. Committees reported on privacy in 1972 and then again in 1990. The idea of a Privacy Act was consistently rejected. As Lord Lester recently remarked: ‘A Privacy Act would probably do little more than codify the existing Convention and UK legal criteria as to how the balance should be struck between free speech and personal privacy’. [4] The 1990 report recommended self-regulation of reporting by the Press Complaints Commission, which is interesting because David Cameron commented on 3rd May that he endorsed self-regulation by the PCC [5]. That report gave the PCC 18 months to prove it was up to the task. Then, in 1993, the same committee concluded that selfregulation was not working. If we are to have self-regulation by the PCC, it would be a good idea for the PCC to provide a more detailed privacy code, of which the judges would be required to take account. The current PCC Editors’ Code of Practice has woefully little to say on privacy and whilst this remains the case it is unsurprising that newspapers are not properly considering privacy interests. Perhaps now that the Report of the Committee on Super-Injunctions has been published the media’s indignation will subside. It seems unlikely that the inaccurate reporting can plausibly continue in the face of the committee’s findings. As the issue falls away, we should reflect on how widespread the inaccuracy of reporting was and how this relates to the threat to newspaper sales. As for Cameron’s willingness to jump on the bandwagon, I think we should expect that by now.
The Report of the Committee on Super-Injunctions: judiciary.gov.uk/Resources/JCO/ Documents/Reports/super-injunction-report-20052011.pdf [1] guardian.co.uk/media/2011/apr/21/cameron-superinjunctions-parliament-shoulddecide-law [2] societyofeditors.co.uk/userfiles/file/PaulDacreSpeech91108.doc [3] inforrm.wordpress.com/2011/04/26/privacy-law-the-way-ahead-part-1-the-newlaw-of-privacy-hugh-tomlinson-qc [4] parliament.uk/pagefiles/60341/Written%20Evidence%20Web2.pdf [5] inforrm.wordpress.com/2011/05/04/news-privacy-and-david-cameron-praisefor-the-pcc-but-no-change-to-the-status-quo cain (2008)
alison lambert
Anonymity orders, regularly misreported as super-injunctions, prevent the naming of parties but not the reporting of proceedings. Such orders will persist where necessary, as it will occasionally be difficult to justify that reporting the identities of parties to a case is in the public interest, when to do so invades their privacy. Such orders are a necessary part of a body of law that respects individual privacy. If so few super-injunctions have been granted, and if their purpose is to temporarily serve justice, why have they attracted such criticism from the press, and why has Cameron expressed concern? Paul Dacre, the editor of the Daily Mail, a publication not known for restrained criticism of the courts, summed it up well in 2008: “the British Press is having a privacy law imposed on it, which…is, I would argue, undermining the ability of mass-circulation newspapers to sell newspapers in an ever more difficult market”. [2] This view seems to indicate that the financial interest in publicising the sexual escapades of footballers outweighs the interests of justice. As for Cameron’s uneasiness, one suspects he is playing to the media while also deflecting criticism about privacy law away from Parliament and onto the judiciary. The reality is that Parliament not only knew that privacy law would develop under the Human Rights Act, but knew this was needed. Certain events involving the press, preceding the Act, make this clear, and are well illustrated by the following passage from Geoffrey Robertson QC’s 1998 book The Justice Game: ‘In 1997 Diana was killed fleeing the flashbulbs she so often positioned herself to attract, a terrible end to the Faustian bargain she had made with the media. Her death has, however, provided some wider understanding of the universal need for a right to be let alone. The law she failed to create in court will, I hope, come about under the impetus of the privacy guarantee of the European Convention on Human Rights, once it is incorporated into British law’.
Tickets PAGE 7.
PAGE 8.
fall (2001)
PAGE 9.
alison lambert
ADAM CURTIS. All Watched Over By Machines of Loving Grace. Interview by Sam Walby.
Adam Curtis began his career working on BBC1’s That’s Life! with Esther Rantzen, kind of a forerunner of Watchdog. A strange place to start, but as anyone working in TV knows it’s all about getting your foot in the door. His first documentary was released in 1984, and since then he has become known for his outspoken demeanour and oblique narrative methods. His technique intersperses archive footage with a very definite, journalistic storyline, leaving the viewer with a refreshing new angle on politics, psychoanalysis, economics and just about anything else of importance. I spoke to Adam on the day of the royal wedding about his upcoming three-part BBC series All Watched Over By Machines of Loving Grace. What are your thoughts on the Royal Wedding and the national hysteria surrounding it? But is there a national hysteria surrounding it? I think one of the really interesting things of our time is the behaviour of journalism – not so much TV journalism, but printed journalism. It is desperate to try and find things that will create mass topics. Journalists keep on looking for simple stories that will somehow bring back a simpler world, but what they produce is so boring. We are not dealing with the really interesting things in our society – how power really does work these days. I also think the coverage of the wedding has been rather hollow. I don’t mean it’s fake, but the people doing it don’t really believe it and there isn’t an audience for it. There’s a sort of general indifference. Why do you prefer to be known as a journalist and not a documentary maker? This is unfair but I’m going to generalise. Journalism is about going out into the chaos and complexity of the real world, finding stories which inevitably simplify that world but in their simplification make you look at things in a different way. That involves an act of finding stuff out and storytelling. You’re proactive as a journalist. I think the real problem with documentary makers – especially in this country, which goes back to a sort of gentlemanly farmer-style tradition of the 1930s – is that somehow you just go out and film what’s out there. You don’t – to quote them (I would never use this word) – ‘mediate’ the footage with commentary. Somehow that is seen as more radical than grubby little journalists who go out and tell stories and use words. Of course, the documentary lot hate me because I slather my stuff with commentary and I say what I think. If I was going to be rude about documentary making I would say that more often than not, in its attempt to be aesthetic and somehow experiential, it ends up, far from offering you a new view, reinforcing myths and clichés about the world. I think most of these are gone actually – but documentaries that say, “God, aren’t human beings inhuman to each other? Isn’t it terrible?” It’s what I call ‘Oh Dearism’. They go out and they film harrowing images which are often inappropriately aestheticised and then expect you to go, “Oh dear!” Well I’m sorry, but that’s not enough. Journalism is about finding things that may be horrible and may make you say “Oh dear”, but then saying, “Have you thought about looking at it this way?”
What inspired the name of your new series, All Watched Over By Machines of Loving Grace? Back in 1967 there was a young poet who later became a famous novelist called Richard Brautigan. He was part of the hippy movement, but a really interesting group who were fascinated by new computer technologies and how machines could fuse with nature. In 1967 he walked through San Francisco one day handing out a sort of manifesto-poem as a free sheet, called All Watched Over By Machines of Loving Grace. The vision it portrayed is of a future world where networks of machines and networks of nature will fuse into one great web. Politics and power will die away and it will be what he called a cybernetic paradise. I thought about it and decided that that’s where we’re going anyway. At that point I realised that maybe it is an ideology – machines, the web and new kinds of social networking. Was that poem the main departure point for the series? No, I had lots of things lurking in my brain. This is the way I tend to do it. I have lots of stories I pick up on. For example, I’d already read in some dry history books that the origins of the idea of an ecosystem lie as much in cybernetic theories of computer control systems as they do in nature itself. I was fascinated by the fact that in the early 90s, the hippies had come together with the right-wing libertarians, who wanted to use computers to regenerate Capitalism, in Silicon Valley and come up with these utopian ideas about computers. When I saw that poem, I thought it had a sort of dream-like root – it was a vision and an idea. I like ideas and how they play out in the real world. You have lots of things in your brain and then they coalesce into a story or argument. Also, it’s about time I looked at computers. You can’t look at them and think of them as neutral. I’m assuming Twitter and social media will play a part in the series... No, I’m not falling into the trap of attacking these things in the way that they’ve been attacked before. Twitter and Facebook are there by implication, because what I’m dealing with is the roots of the idea that we can be connected in systems, which can stabilise and balance themselves as an alternative to old hierarchies. I’m much more interested in the things you don’t know, which is where it all comes from. It isn’t an innocent idea that we can all be connected together. It actually goes back to the hippy communes, and the idea of distributive networks and no hierarchy, and way back into the British Empire and the idea of ecosystems that can balance themselves. But yes, I am critical of the naivety behind the idea that a self-organising system can change the world. What I argue is that that’s actually a machine theory of organisation. Social networking can help to organise rebellions, as we’ve seen in Egypt, but actually they will not tell you what comes next. There are no ideas. There are no actual visions of the future, just systems of organisation. At the end of the second film I look at what happened to the early ‘internet revolutions’ in Ukraine, Georgia and Kurdistan. They all failed. They were held up as examples and I am not decrying them in any way, because they were noble attempts to throw off dictators and oppressive systems, but actually in Ukraine the guy they threw out is back in power and dismantling democracy as we speak. What I’m saying is we’re confusing systems of social organisation with ideas of how to change the world. Machine ideas can’t envisage another world – they can only reorganise the world as it is. If I was brutal, a lot of the ‘visionary’ nature of internet utopianism really boils down to you and me and lots of other people, sitting up late at night relabeling our photos on Flickr, as far as I can see. It tends to turn us into librarians or, to be even more brutal, management theorists, because that’s really what we’re dealing with – that our aim now is not to try and change the world, because we distrust politics, but to simply manage the world and keep it stable. Continued overleaf...
livia (2010)
alison lambert PAGE 10.
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ADAM CURTIS. continued.
The idea of the internet as democratic and open is interesting. Since most people use it to reinforce their own ideas, they’ll only read what they want to read, and they’ll be dismissing any dissent or debate and end up in a comfortable bubble. That’s absolutely right, and again it’s about organisation. I don’t go into it too much, but it’s absolutely true. Marketeers will tell you that it’s reinforcing – “If you like this, then you’ll like that”. The normal curve of people’s choices when they buy things online is much narrower than it is when they used to go to record shops, for example. It’s an echo chamber of other people like you, which simplifies the world. It doesn’t change it. I have to deal with a lot of online utopians at the BBC. I challenge them to name something beyond three minutes long that is genuinely an original piece of work, that isn’t just copied from TV, film or radio. They never can. On the topic of social media, what I find interesting is the chasm between the real person and their online persona, how delicately that is sculpted. The question that you have to ask people is: would they write about their real feelings when they’re feeling really down? No, because half of your ‘friends’ or ‘followers’ would give you up. They don’t want to know that you’re lonely, shit and depressed, because it would be like meeting you dribbling at a party. They wouldn’t want to talk to you. So what you do is you create a public persona, and actually there is an argument that what you’re really bringing back is the old division between public and private persona which dominated the West until the 1950s, from the 18th Century onwards. The public and private ‘you’ were separate, and maybe we are working our way back to that. It’s very formal and somewhat hierarchical, but it’s fun(!) The new series is going to be three episodes. Do you prefer to present your pieces in chunks? Yeah, but that’s also the nature of the medium. Episodes are good because you can build. You can’t assume anyone will watch all of them, but it’s a very good way of tackling quite a broad area which has pervaded lots of aspects of our lives from different angles. The first episode is about economics and ideas of a stable world, the second one is about hippies and nature, self-organising systems and revolution, and the third is about genetics. I’ve never been interested in doing feature-length documentaries really, because that’s where they farm out the posh gits who don’t like having commentary. TV is great for episodic storytelling. Last month we interviewed Ken Loach, and he said that conscientious TV is “stifled by managers and executives” and that “there’s got to be a different attitude at the top” for this to change. Do you agree? I think it’s the most powerful medium there is at the moment. If you have a very powerful medium, there are going to be a lot of gatekeepers. You just have to accept that. If you want to get stuff on TV, you’ve got to find ways round that. Sometimes you manoeuvre, sometimes you change, but what do you expect? Them to say, “Oh yeah! Come on and say whatever you want!” No. You are always going to get executives who are very careful, very aware of how they are judged. All sorts of things come into play. You deal with it or you don’t. People say, “Oh, television’s going really bad.” It’s always been shit, but every now and then there is something good on. It’s run by people who want to be sure it doesn’t go wrong. You can’t blame them for that, especially at a state broadcasting organisation like the BBC. I know I’m speaking from a position of privilege, but I don’t think people at the top in TV are much worse than they used to be.
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The other thing I would say in their defence is that when I get wannabe producers coming to me saying they can’t get something really radical on TV, what they say is clichéd. “Bankers are bad” – I know that, Hollywood tells me that. Or that “the Afghanistan war is really wrong” – yes...? I have a suspicion that a lot of the producer class, especially the unthinking left, haven’t really got anything new to say about the world. That’s the real problem. That is also the problem in politics at the moment. Look at Labour – it doesn’t really have anything new to say. Have you experienced limitations like that at the BBC? Yes, of course, but you’re aware of them. Your job is to negotiate these people. I’m not going to tell you specifically what I’ve done, because that’s the politics of how you get stuff on TV. I was very proud that I got The Power of Nightmares on TV, but actually in fairness to the BBC I had no problems with it. It went through all sorts of levels of lawyers and senior executives, but they backed me, and I think that shows it is possible. The time was right, because they knew that a lot of reporting of terrorism was simplified, distorted and naive. I’m not in any way trying to make it seem easy, but you don’t go into powerful places without having to face that sort of opposition. Do you think the internet can offer any real solution for filmmakers who feel they cannot get on TV? I’m waiting to see it. I love Youtube. I love sneezing pandas, and I think one of the interesting cultural changes the internet has produced is a changing relationship with animals. But I’m surprised by how little original stuff there is on the internet. Beyond three and a half minutes, I haven’t seen a film or programme that genuinely couldn’t have been put on television. They’ve tried multiple endings and the audience choosing the plots. They’re tried those ‘go and find something out in the real world’ games, but none of them really worked. One interesting area is BBC iPlayer, because if you can watch stuff again, filmmakers can make stuff for iPlayer that could be 20 hours long, just one great long thing that people could stop and rewatch, just like a novel. That’s one thing you can’t do on television. I was reading your website the other day, specifically your extended piece about the war in Biafra in the 60s. Are web posts like this something you will move towards more in the future? They feel like mini films.
Do you have free rein of the BBC archive? I’m allowed to look at whatever I want. Basically the only real restrictions are legal. Drama I can’t really use, because there are all sorts of contracts with actors, but I don’t really want to use. But the BBC knows full well that the public paid for all this stuff, and therefore it should be available completely online. But the trouble with that is that it would be too much, so having people like me going in there and using it in new ways is part of the public service. There is a very strong argument that everything we do should be available forever. Have you got any advice for people trying to make original films for TV? If you find a story that you think is fascinating, the chances are other people will as well. You may think that saying bankers are bad is a good area to look at, but you’ve then got to find details that really surprise people. Do something original online. I know everyone says the internet is mayhem and full of stuff, but as I said before there is very little that is original. It’s full of homogenising groups who mumble to each other that Barack Obama is not American, or whatever, but if you can find a really good story and publicise it online, it’s a very good calling card for you. Don’t get obsessed with buying the latest camera that can do some fantastic, high-definition recordings and then make lots of videos where only a tiny bit of the frame is in focus, which is the mode of the moment. That’s so boring. What I want is someone who tells me a really interesting story. South Park do it every week. The people who run TV are actually desperate for good stuff.
Adam Curtis will discuss All Watched Over By Machines of Loving Grace and the inspiration behind its creation at the Lyceum Theatre on Friday 10th June, 2.15pm as part of Doc/Fest 2011. The documentary will be shown on 11th June, 10am at the Showroom Cinema, as well as on BBC Two.
ezra (1999)
alison lambert
bbc.co.uk/blogs/adamcurtis
I’ve sort of stumbled on something there. The focus is the BBC archive films themselves, so you’re not doing what newspapers do, which is break up an online news story with a chunk of video which is annoying and irrelevant. I’m doing the opposite by presenting videos with little explanations in between. The BBC love it. Once I’ve got these new films out of the way I’m hoping to do more. It’s like a form of essay writing. I can play videos for longer. I can take unedited rushes, and viewers really like this. I’ve been given all the footage the BBC has shot in Afghanistan in the last 30 years – it occupies vast numbers of drives – and now I’m thinking how best to use that... Do you have a specific process with regards to collecting archive footage? I am quite dull, but I don’t on my day off go and sit in the dark and watch footage. But there are other things I have discovered too, like news comp reels, which were originally two-inch tapes that the BBC used to dump everything that was put out on the news over satellite on to. One of the most fascinating things is just to watch through, usually on fast forward. If I come across an image I like, I take a copy. If I feel a particular part of a story has an emotional resonance, often I will remember an image I have and assume that most people will get the connection, even if it makes no logical sense.
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27B/6. team building. 27bslash6.com
From: David Thorne To: Thomas Subject: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Staff weekend
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Dear Thomas,
Dear Thomas,
My point exactly. I knew you would understand. It might be interesting to see what talents the staff come up with for talent night though. I have been here for years and haven’t seen any. You and I could team up and present a re-enactment of last week’s client presentation. I will play the female client and you can demonstrate the importance of remembering to do up your fly if you forego underpants. We could do a puppet show. All we would need is one of those floppy skinned pug dogs peeking through a set of curtains while wearing a rusty-brown Brillo pad collar.
By a surprising coincidence, best described as “hardly a”, that is the exact text the staff training website has on its front page. Your engagement with this appropriated copy is particularly surprising as it is the same rhetoric we write everyday for clients.
Yoga is out of the question. Seeing the staff clad in Spandex, kicking and rolling around on the floor like a pod of neon walruses engaged in a territorial dispute, is not only something that once seen cannot be unseen, but is also quite possibly a breach of Occupational Health & Safety regulations. I don’t care if there is a funky dance beat. I am fine with canoeing though. As long as I can sit in the back and pretend to paddle only when the person in the front turns around to complain about me not paddling; it might be a nice break from avoiding activities. If it is one of those little single-person kayaks, my non-paddling will have the added benefit of failing to keep up with the group. As you all pass around a bend in the river, I will have the opportunity, should I wish to take it after our day together, to roll the kayak and drown.
“It’s about establishing and reinforcing staff relationships. Relationships that create a friendly, trusting and balanced work environment.” Surprising as it may seem, I am not a huge fan of time spent with co-workers. Mainly because it usually means being at work and I am a huge fan of not being at work. When I do attend, I spend the whole day coming up with an excuse not to be there the next day so really it is just time that would be better spent on a hobby or something.
Also, what are the sleeping arrangements? I won’t share with Lucius again after the last interstate client meeting. I was unable to sleep due to his controlled breathing and rustling. It was around 3am before I realised why he had placed the mini hairconditioner bottle from the hotel bathroom on his side table and what the clicking and squeezing sounds were.
Occasionally, I am expected to spend time with co-workers outside of office hours. Last year, it was three days on a houseboat stuck on a sandbar. The year before that, Thomas organised a camping trip to a lake he had visited when he was a child. After purchasing kayaks and tents, renting a trailer and driving for eight hours, we arrived to find the town abandoned, due to the lake drying up several years prior, so we drove back. I did get to poke a lizard with a stick though, so it was not a complete waste of time.
I have attached a diagram indicating proposed travel, sleeping and activity arrangements. I am A, everyone else is B, and C is a lockable door. Will we be paid to attend? Regards, David.
Shannon and I had a meeting on Friday to discuss doing one of those staff team building weekends. It’s tax deductible and we can get a package deal with one near the river that looks nice with activities like yoga, canoeing, talent night, hiking and orienteering. It’s 3 hours drive so if we leave Friday lunch time, we will get there by 4pm. The plan is to lock in the 25th to the 27th of this month so can everyone check their diaries and get back to me please? TJ From: David Thorne To: Thomas Subject: Re: Staff weekend
Dear Thomas, Although I am usually the first to embrace any excuse for absence from the workplace, my absence usually involves a direct correlation to the absence of people I work with. Spending several hours in a vehicle to participate in activities that involve being sweaty, wet, judged and then lost together, sounds pretty much the same as a normal week in the office. Will we be paid to attend? Also, what is the difference between hiking and orienteering? Regards, David.
From: Thomas To: David Thorne Subject: Re: Re: Staff weekend
I think one is where you walk around and look at things and the other is where you have a compass. I don’t know, google it. The point isn’t what the activities are, its that we do them together as a team. I knew you would be the first one to complain about this. Everybody else had a good time last year on the houseboat trip .TJ
Regards, David.
From: Thomas To: David Thorne Subject: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Staff weekend No. You don’t get paid to go on a staff weekend trip. It’s like a bonus. It costs us money to do it. What a stupid question. Not counting food and travel, it is $3,200 just to stay there and Shannon has budgeted another $500 for alcohol. If you are going to spend the entire trip being annoying just don’t go.
fig. 1. - TRAVEL. A
From: David Thorne To: Thomas Subject: Re: Re: Re: Staff weekend
From: Shannon Walkley To: David Thorne Subject: Hey Hi, Are you coming to the staff weekend event on the 25th? I am booking it today.
fig. 2. - SLEEPING.
Thanks Shan.
Dear Thomas, When did I indicate that I had anything other than a fabulous time aboard the houseboat last year? I am the last to complain about anything. If I were on a television game show where points were awarded for complaining, my only complaint would be participating in a show that is clearly beyond my means of winning. At the end of the show, I would thank the host and say I had a wonderful time anyway.
B A
My favourite part of the houseboat trip was when we were stuck on a sandbar for three days. Unable to radio for help due to your hair dryer usage draining the reserve batteries, you claimed yourself Captain and ordered me to swim ashore in search of a tall hill to climb with the hope of gaining mobile phone reception. It is not mutiny if the Captain cannot provide sufficient evidence to support his title, and besides, you refused to accept my title of Grand Admiral Emperor King of Everything the next day. My second favourite part of the trip was when you drank our entire week’s alcohol supply on the first afternoon, fell from the bow, and yelled at me for not diving in to rescue you. In my defence, I was wearing new shoes and did give the area a quick visual check for anything of sufficient buoyancy to cast to you. Failing to locate a jumping castle, I felt the next best thing would be the ability to later provide an accurate eye-witness account. I would have left out the bits where you screamed, “Something touched my leg” and “Not like this. Not like this.”
From: David Thorne To: Shannon Walkley Subject: Re: Hey
C
fig. 3. - ACTIVITIES.
B
Count me in Shannon. I for one am excited about the opportunity to spend the weekend together establishing and reinforcing staff relationships. Relationships that create a friendly, trusting and balanced work environment. On talent night, I am going to be a sexy space pirate. What are you going as?
From: Shannon Walkley To: David Thorne Subject: Re: Re: Hey I don’t know yet. Probably a magic trick or something.
Just this morning I was sitting here thinking, while nodding randomly to portray interest in Shannon’s dilemma regarding missing Farmville credits and watching Lucius pick his nose and wipe it under his desk, that the one thing missing in my life is a greater percentage of time spent with these people. If I take a compass with me on the hike does that mean I can skip the orienteering? This would leave me with only yoga, canoeing and talent night to avoid participating in. Regards, David.
From: Thomas To: David Thorne Subject: Re: Re: Re: Re: Staff weekend You’re such a liar and it wasn’t 3 days. It was less than six hours and when I went into the water you didn’t even get out of your chair. You threw a coke can at me and told me to hold on to it so don’t pretend you tried to help. What’s the point of you even going this year if you are not going to participate in the TEAM activities?? TJ
PAGE 14.
Also, will we be paid to attend?
TJ
B
From: Thomas To: All Staff Subject: Staff weekend
I personally have no desire whatsoever to work in a balanced environment. A coordinated procedure of constant correction would be required and I doubt anybody here has practical fulcrum experience. If someone picked up a stapler from one side of the office, it would need to be replaced with something of equal weight. Probably a calculator and two pens. When you leave for lunch each day, we would have to place something in your chair for three hours and be able to shift it on your return. A system involving rope, pulleys and a mule would probably need to be devised. I hope you have thought this through as it sounds like a lot of team effort and that is the last thing any of us want around here.
From: Thomas To: David Thorne Subject: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Staff weekend The client didn’t notice and if it had been you, I would have said something. And people don’t wear spandex doing yoga, you’re thinking of jazzercise. As a member of the team you are expected to be there and participate in ALL the activities. It’s meant to be about the team spending time together outside of work establishing and reinforcing staff relationships. Relationships that create a friendly, trusting and balanced work environment. TJ PAGE 15.
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media lens. You Cannot Kill An Ideology With A Gun. medialens.org
Writing in the New York Times, Jonathan Haidt, professor of psychology at the University of Virginia, commented: ‘Although Americans are in full agreement that the demise of Osama Bin Laden is a good thing, many are disturbed by the revelry.’ (Haidt, ‘Why We Celebrate a Killing,’ New York Times, 7th May 2011) Haidt thereby dismissed the many Americans who reject extrajudicial killing and capital punishment. American lawyer Benjamin Ferencz, a prosecutor at the Nuremberg war crimes trials, pointed out: ‘Assassination is specifically prohibited under American law. It hadn’t been that way all the time. The CIA had always had at the top of its list the possibility of assassination as a technique until the Congress said, “No way, we don’t do business that way.”’ There is much discussion about the legality or illegality of the West’s many wars. Ferencz explained the real relationship between war and law: ‘End war-making and go back to what the law is. And that is that you cannot use armed force to settle disputes, you can use only lawful and peaceful means to do that.’ Law is intended to be an alternative to war, not a way of justifying war. But wouldn’t resorting to the rule of law in the form of a trial have allowed Bin Laden to spread propaganda, to present himself as a martyr for a noble cause? Did killing him not protect American lives? Ferencz pointed out the naivety of imagining that violence is the most potent resort: ‘You apprehend him, if you can without danger to yourself. Put him on trial. Let him make his case. Let him say to the world why they killed 3,000 people in New York City and many thousands elsewhere. And see how the public and the judges react to it. There will be, of course, some extreme elements on both sides which will say, ‘No, kill him at once. He’s a dirty dog and he deserves to be shot.’ And there will be others who will say that ‘No matter what you do, he is our holy man and he is carrying out noble goals.’ But these will be the extreme cases. The vast majority of the people will say, when the evidence is in, that this is a form of madness! ‘You cannot kill an ideology with a gun. You can only come with a better ideology and let them explain it and see what the facts are. We did that at Nuremberg. I had mass killers there; I was chief prosecutor in a trial where our lead defendant admitted killing 90,000 Jews because they were Jews, including their children, and their grandchildren, and anybody else. Well, when they explained their motivation - that this was a pre-emptive attempt to avoid attack by Russia and to secure German security [and] for the rest of the world forever - that argument was rejected, and rejected correctly by honest judges who explained why that position cannot be tolerated if you want to have a civilised world. If everybody can go out and decide he’s threatened by his neighbour, in his opinion, and therefore kill him and everybody around him, what kind of a world would we have?’ Haidt took a very different view. ‘As a social psychologist,’ he opined, he was aware that careless thinking on moral issues could have negative consequences, namely: ‘you’ll miss all that was good, healthy and even altruistic about last week’s celebrations’. We wrote on 7th May: Dear Jonathan Haidt I was interested to read your New York Times piece on “collective effervescence”. Can you think of any examples when it has been “good, healthy and even altruistic” for people to cheer the killing of Americans? I have to admit I can’t think of any examples.
As the email suggests, we can politically reverse any given argument, apply it to official enemies, and ask ourselves if the author would ever be willing to make such a comment. In this case, the reversal would involve Haidt warning people against missing ‘all that was good, healthy and even altruistic’ about celebrating the killing of US military leaders, US soldiers or New Yorkers on September 11th 2001. Can we imagine Haidt or anyone else in the media ever saying such a thing? If the answer is ‘No,’ it can be for one of two reasons: 1) The United States is morally superior to its official enemies, such that it is acceptable for the American public to celebrate the demise of their inferior foes, but immoral for those enemies to celebrate the death of Americans. 2) The US is not morally superior. Rather, US commentators conform to the ‘necessary illusion’ that different standards should be applied to US and enemy actions. In other words, US opinion is biased by the ability of power to shape the debate – technical term: propaganda. Of course, commentators and readers can be blind to this propaganda component. Thus Haidt actually declares: ‘Many social psychologists distinguish patriotism — a love of one’s own country — from nationalism, which is the view that one’s own country is superior to other countries and should therefore be dominant.’ But he added: ‘This is why I believe that last week’s celebrations were good and healthy. America achieved its goal — bravely and decisively — after 10 painful years. People who love their country sought out one another to share collective effervescence. They stepped out of their petty and partisan selves and became, briefly, just Americans rejoicing together.’ Would Haidt argue that Iraqi celebrations were ‘good and healthy’ if Iraqi commandos somehow managed to execute George W. Bush? As Noam Chomsky commented recently: ‘Uncontroversially, [Bush’s] crimes vastly exceed Bin Laden’s, and he is not a “suspect” but uncontroversially the “decider” who gave the orders to commit the “supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole” (quoting the Nuremberg Tribunal) for which Nazi criminals were hanged: the hundreds of thousands of deaths, millions of refugees, destruction of much of the country, the bitter sectarian conflict that has now spread to the rest of the region.’ We received a reply from Haidt on 18th May: Dear Mr. Edwards: When America is led by a man whose direct goal is to kill as many innocent civilians as possible, e.g., a man with the moral status of Bin Laden or Hitler, then the world will be quite justified in celebrating. Thankfully, that has never happened. Jh And yet in his article, Haidt focused not on the justice of the cause Americans were celebrating, but on the simple fact that they were celebrating as a group: ‘We have all the old selfish programming of other primates, but we also have a more recent overlay that makes us able to become, briefly, hive creatures like bees.’ He wrote: ‘This hive-ish moment won’t last long. But in the communal joy of last week, many of us felt, for an instant, that Americans might still be capable of working together to meet threats and challenges far greater than Osama Bin Laden.’ It is unclear why Haidt would not also laud the ‘hive-ish’ behaviour of nonAmericans.
Read the rest of this alert and more at medialens.org
malphas (2010) alison lambert
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city centre independent ale.
RED DEER 9 pump selection of traditional real ales and ciders. Square Hole Comedy Night 2nd Monday of the month 8pm Quiz me crazy every Tuesday 8.30pm Pocket Music Acoustic Sessions 1st Thursday 8pm. Pocket Music Open Mic 3rd Thursday 8pm Movie Night 1st Sunday 8pm Opening Times Tues - Thurs 12pm-12am Fri & Sat 12-1am Sun & Mon 12-11pm Fresh homemade food served Mon - Fri 12-3pm & 5-9pm Sat & Sun 12-9pm 18 Pitt St, Sheffield, S1 4DD. tel. 0114 2722890 www.red-deer-sheffield.co.uk Facebook - The Red Deer Sheffield
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wordlife. Collated by Joe Kriss.
Back to poetry this month.. Tony Walsh was a guest at the Best of Shef Poetry Slam we ran as part of Sheffield Poetry Festival back in March. Sarah Thomasin is one of Sheffield’s leading performance poets. Along with John Turner she runs open mic night Speak Easy at Hallam Hubs. She is currently writing a hundred sestinas in a hundred days – no mean feat. ‘The Seven’ is number 57 and is a reimagining of the Snow White tale. This is Paul Tobin’s first submission published in Now Then. I think we all know a ‘wild John’. Keep the prose and poetry submissions coming to joe@nowthenmagazine.com Joe.
Upcoming Events. Word Life Presents the Banoffee Pie Tour Collective.
12th June, 7pm. Cafe Euro, John Street. £4 (£3 concs).
Featuring free pie and music from Bridie Jackson and The Big Society (“beautifully sparse and riotous, raucous new folk,” Narc Magazine) and Newcastle-based singer-songwriter Kid Kirby, as well as poetry from Mark Doyle and Alabaster DePlume, who has been described as “harrowingly funny” by Citylifers.co.uk. More poets TBA.
Signposts presents The Shoebox Experiment.
15th June, 7.30pm. The Riverside, 1 Mowbray Street. £4 (£3 concs). The third Shoebox Experiment is a night of poetry, storytelling and music featuring acclaimed Yorkshire writers Carola Luther and Linda Lee Welch. Arguments with Malarchy by Carola Luther is a sequence of 11 poems, an extended dramatic monologue in the voice of an old man. The sequence is woven around the rich tones of double bass improvisation by composer Jenni Molloy. Linda Lee Welch’s At The Crossroads Café is a new commission by Signposts for The Shoebox Experiment. This musical drama about choices fuses a series of travellers’ tales with the story of the café owners, whose relationship has reached a crisis point.
The Seven.
Wild John.
Small Elephants.
Black hair, red lips and skin as white as snow We saw her running down a forest track. A blanket round her shoulders, frightened eyes. At first we thought we’d keep out of the way. She’d run from home, no doubt, for something small. She’d soon calm down, and go back to the village
John was wild,
The father taught his son a line,
Kinetic with the drink,
remembered from his own childhood,
Bouncing off the walls.
on how to spell “because”.
Out of the house,
“Big Elephants Can Always Understand Small Elephants”, he said.
Across the gardens,
The boy laughed,
But Dopey said she wasn’t from the village. He’d seen her dainty footprints in the snow (He said he’d never seen a foot so small) They led toward the palace. He can track A spider to its web. She’d run away. Could not go back; we saw it in her eyes.
Down to the row of garages.
and his father smiled
Where better to shake off your clothes?
because
To caper round the car naked.
he understood
When that proved as pointless,
that the child
He sat on the cold concrete and he cried,
would never
But all of us had fled from prying eyes And wagging tongues, been chased out of the village And here, deep in the forest, found a way To live in perfect love, as pure as snow Three couples, with our stories back on track, And poor old Dopey: sad, alone, and small.
Drunk in the darkness,
forget.
Though, actually, we’re none of us that small. Not dwarves, but “fairies”, in our neighbours’ eyes. So now we live far from the beaten track. Knowing we’re not accepted in the village So when this dark haired girl with cheeks like snow Showed up, we thought we ought to find a way
Before the dementia claimed her,
To find out why she’d had to run away. Eventually she came upon our small But tidy cottage, nestled in the snow She looked at us with disbelieving eyes And asked if she’d already found the village. We laughed and told her she was way off track.
Before the heart attack,
She told us then, how she’d come down this track. How from the queen she’d had to run away She thought she might seek shelter in the village. (Our bitter smiles told her the chance was small) Her woodsman’s blanket caught poor Dopey’s eyes He snatched it from her, sobbing in the snow.
“Put your clothes on, please John.”
The village is some five miles down the track But in this snow, she’ll never find her way. Though our home’s small, She thanks us with her eyes.
Paul Tobin.
Unable to see the joist or to tie the knot. His wife, a martyr, (we all knew this), Would have fifteen more years
Tony Walsh. longfella.co.uk
Of going out, of other men, Left her on a locked ward, One room to ask her questions in: “Where is John?” “This is not my house, is it?” John would have five years Outside of Oxley’s, by then a pool hall. John would have five more years
laelia (2011)
alison lambert
And three more coaxings: “Come off the clammy bonnet John” Three more mornings To pass you on the street, As if the night had not happened.
Sarah Thomasin.
sarahsestina.wordpress.com
The Story Forge.
21stJune, 8pm. The Fat Cat, Kelham Island. £2 (suggested donation). The Story Forge is an open mic storytelling club based around tales from the floor with guest spots every other month. Come along with a tale to share or just to sup good beer in fine company and listen to the glorious cascade of words.
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12 real ales inc. sheffield Brewery beers, Continental beers on draught & bottled, real Cider, art exhibitions, Bookcrossing shelf, traditional games inc. Bar Billiards (last table in sheffield), livemusic, quiz night...
June events: Fri 3rd M & J Blues 9pm, sat 4th Jim O’Mahoney 9pm, Wed 8th Tracey’s Session 8.30pm, Fri 10th John Keane&Friends 8.30pm, sat 11th tbc, thurs 16th Scandi Session 8.30pm, Fri 17th Billy Martin Jnr 9pm, sat 18th Dale Storr & Kim Mayhew, Fri 24th Jackalope Tales 9pm, sat 25th Dave Stanton 9pm, thurs 30th Galactic Session 8.30pm
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R R
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Twice Judged Best Real Ale Pub in Britain, 2008 & 2009. 13 Real Ales. Traditional Cider & Perry. Large Range of World Beers. Beer & Cider Festival 23rd -26th June 2011. Folk Nights Every Sunday 9pm Onwards. Opening Hours 12-12, 7 Days a Week 62 Russell Street, Sheffield S3 8RW. tel. 0114 272 2482. web. www.kelhamislandtavern.co.uk
PAGE 24.
OUR PRIZEWINNING BEERS Deception ABV 4.1% Champion Beer of Sheffield 2010, Sheffield and District Campaign for Real Ale.
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Sheffield Independent Ale.
the riverside arts & music
Festival
14 handpumps Real ciders, american craft ales homemade food, live music, quiz night, beer and cider tastings. The Harlequin, 108 Nursery Street, Sheffield S3 8GG www.theharlequinpub.wordpress.com
Working in partnership with
11th & 12th June. Free entry
For PeoPle Not ProFits only 100% charity owned pub in sheffield. Wide range of real Ales and Ciders available. open 7 days a week for quality Food & Drink. Families welcome.
Saturday .
Live Bands, Local DJ’s, Arts & Crafts Stalls, Workshops, BBQ.
Sunday Old Sweetshop Exhibition Opening Live Reggae Band, Soul Spectrum DJ’s, Live Fire Poi, BBQ.
1 Mowbray Street, Kelham Island, Sheffield, S3 8EN. tel. 0114 2724640. Email. chris@pointblank.org.uk
The
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octavia (2010) - alison lambert for now then magazine. - nowthenmagazine.com
PAGE 30.
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theron (2010)
alison lambert PAGE 32.
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alison lambert. emotion and expression. interview by jones.
Now an unkind soul might say that the main motivating reason in having last month’s colour-drenched feature (Martin Machado) was to revel in some proper monochrome from this month’s artist. They would probably be right. Colour is all well and good, but line and form are where my heart lies. I’ve followed Alison’s work for the best part of a decade. Emotion and Expression - one of her amazing portfolio editions - sits on my desk, and as a result I’m utterly proud to be able to showcase her work here. Her images are steeped in expression, from the eyes of her characters to the methods the faces are hewed from the paper, and the obsessive technicality of how her images are constructed is a pleasure to appreciate and decipher. Constantly innovating her technique and method whilst keeping a massively original style and flow to her work, she serves as a great inspiration for how to get work done. Be aware of what’s gone before you, as a reference and guide. Styles come and go. Stick to your guns.
BASICS, PLEASE. WHAT STARTED YOU DRAWING? During my three years at the Lanchester Polytechnic, Coventry, 1981-84, I made paintings using the horse within an imaginary landscape space. But my depictions of these wonderful animals were fairly fragmented and indeterminate. After visiting the Prado museum in Madrid and seeing the works of some of the artists that I admired such as Velasquez and Goya, I realised that in order to paint the kind of images I had in mind it was necessary for me to learn to draw, so that my horse and human forms within a landscape space could be more descriptive and bold. The revelation that came to me was that you can’t really paint figuratively without knowing how to draw. CAN YOU DESCRIBE THE PROCESS OF STARTING A NEW PIECE? I start each piece slightly differently but it is always on a plain sheet of paper. Usually I sprinkle charcoal on to the paper then, using my hands and a brush, I begin to describe a form. I then continue with a piece of charcoal and an eraser until the form becomes more evident. I continue to draw, rub out areas and change things around. If an area needs fresh white again due to too much rubbing out or the need to introduce light, I attach fresh pieces of white paper and continue to draw over the top and so on. Sometimes certain areas of a drawing can be many layers thick. WHERE DO YOU GET YOUR INSPIRATION FROM? My inspiration usually comes from the drawings I am working on at the time. They seem to ‘feedback’ into new work. I usually have several pieces on the go at the same time. I don’t wait for inspiration, although visiting galleries and looking at the work of other artists can be very inspiring, even though I don’t use other artists’ work directly for ideas. I also gather masses of source material, usually photos of human heads and portraits from books, newspapers, magazines etc. TOOLS - WHAT DO YOU USE REGULARLY AND WHAT’S YOUR FAVOURITE? I use thick willow charcoal, black pastel, tablet erasers from the Tate shop, soft brushes and a cobblers knife which has been adapted for me. WHAT OTHER ARTISTIC MEDIA HAVE HAD AN EFFECT ON YOUR ART? I find listening to music while I work very important. I have a tendency to prefer slow, melancholy work. I feel sure it has an effect in some way on my imagery. I suppose any art form - like theatre, dance, film - has an effect on me, as it would any artist. These things enter the psyche and become a part of the sum of who you are.
PAGE 34.
work flow - progress stages of prometheus (2005)
HOW DO YOU SPEND YOUR DAYS?
ANY TIPS ON HOW TO SURVIVE MAKING MONEY FROM YOUR ART? DO YOU FIND IT IMPORTANT?
I generally work every day. After breakfast at home, I walk with my husband in the park. We drive to the Warehouse Studios and I catch up with emails and general warehouse things that need doing. I then begin drawing or making monotypes in my print studio around mid-morning. I work through to about 5pm when I go for a walk in the local countryside or visit the gym. After eating at around 7pm at the studios I continue to work until about 9pm or longer (depending on deadlines). We go home at about 10.30pm and start again the next day.
It has been important since my work started selling 24 years ago. It is my main source of income and I am therefore dependent on it. But selling is not the main driving force and I certainly did not set out with it in mind when I was a student. The main reason for being an artist is always that I enjoy it and love the daily challenge. I also have to admit to really liking the fact that it gets seen outside my studio.
WHICH OF YOUR RECENT PIECES HAVE YOU ENJOYED MAKING THE MOST?
Initially, it was very hard to survive. You need somewhere to work and some part-time paid work. Artist group studios are a good idea as it is good for morale to know you are working in the same building as other artists.
There isn’t a particular drawing, but generally the ones which work without too much struggle are the ones I enjoy the most. Also, I particularly value the drawings that throw up ideas for new work. Despite the inevitable struggle of most of them, I get an immense feeling of pleasure and satisfaction from finishing every drawing. Pleasure and despair come with the act of creating a piece of work, so I will have these feelings many times during a day.
You need a gallery to represent you, preferably in London or another capital city which will help to build your reputation, market and sell your work for you. It is possible to do the selling yourself by hiring gallery spaces, but it would be a lot of hard work without specialist knowledge. If you were to rely on a website only, you would not be getting your work seen in the flesh.
HOW HAS YOUR ART EVOLVED OVER TIME? Very slowly. My imagery began with horses. I became interested in Greek and Roman sculpture so I could introduce the human figure and head into my work. I wasn’t interested in portraits of specific people - I wanted them to be more universal and timeless, so these idealised statues were very useful. My use of Classical Greek and Roman imagery led me to start introducing mythical creatures into my work. Gradually, the human image, in particular the human head, began to dominate and I concentrated on trying to make them more naturalistic without them becoming portraits of particular people. The subject became ‘the human condition’ and it is this and the feelings behind the eyes and inside the heads of my human beings that is the most important aspect of my work now.
You therefore need to send very high-quality photographs and CVs on a CD to targeted galleries and see if they are interested in your work. Galleries have hundreds of artists contacting them all the time so the competition is very high. It is not a good idea to just turn up at a gallery with your work or photos of it.
HOW HAS ART IN GENERAL CHANGED SINCE YOU STARTED?
Careless or bad craftsmanship and banality.
When I was a student in the early 80s there had been a return to figurative art. The exhibition ‘A New Spirit in Painting’ at the Royal Academy in 1981 and the 1982 Zeitgeist exhibition at the Martin-Gropius-Bau in Berlin had been very influential in highlighting artists who were producing powerful and expressive figurative work – sometimes referred to as New Imagism or New Expressionism. I found this movement very encouraging as it related to what I was producing at the time.
WHAT MAKES YOU SMILE IN ART?
Since then a wider range of work and media types has come to the fore – photography, video, installation – lately characterised by the Sensation exhibition at the Royal Academy in 1997 featuring young British artists. I suppose the underlying values of this work are very different from my own, but I have continued to use a traditional medium and to pursue what I believe to be fundamental or archetypal human characteristics - that is, what does it mean to be human? What is subjectivity? I expect this kind of work is less fashionable now, but I still believe I am working with universal themes that are not subject to periodic changes in style and fashion.
GOOD ADVICE YOU WISH YOU’D BEEN TOLD EARLIER?
WHAT ARE YOU CURRENTLY WORKING ON?
If you do begin to sell regularly you will need an accountant. An accountant will know what things you can legitimately claim against tax, like materials, photography, office costs and transportation. Always keep a good photographic record of all the work you ever do and keep all relevant receipts, even before you begin to sell, so you can claim for them retrospectively. WHAT DO YOU DISLIKE IN ART?
Funny or quirky images found in some Outsider art, Naïve art and Children’s art and some of Picasso’s more light hearted pieces. Every now and again something amusing appears in contemporary art. It was great fun seeing Anish Kapoor’s wax blasting cannon at the National Gallery recently.
As a student I had been told that working with the human figure and particularly with horse images was dated and clichéd. This didn’t put me off, but I wish in those early days when I was trying to find a personal ‘vision’ as an artist I had been told not to worry about what was ‘contemporary’ or ‘fashionable’, to simply be confident in pursuing my own chosen medium and imagery. Having said that, I did have some excellent tutors and, after I left college, I worked with a community of practicing artists who gave me a lot of moral support. This kind of support and encouragement is important. Without it, young artists can easily lose confidence and give up.
I have just begun a new set of drawings for my main dealer, the Jill George Gallery in London. She has sold the work I recently finished for her so I need to replenish her stocks. I will need to start building up enough work for my next solo exhibition with the gallery, which usually takes a couple of years. In between times, Jill takes work to art fairs in London, Toronto and Madrid during the year, so I need to make sure she has new work for these too. I also have a dealer in Toronto, the Nicholas Metivier Gallery, where I had my last solo exhibition in October 2010. He takes my work to art fairs too so the same applies. Recently I have been experimenting with small monotypes and have produced some which are being sold through my print dealers, Pratt Contemporary Art in Kent. Jill George also took some to the Chicago Art Fair recently. I am therefore working on monotypes of human heads at the same time as drawing. I am thoroughly enjoying working on a much smaller scale in such a different medium.
More work, information on purchasing prints and originals and on upcoming exhibitions all available at jillgeorgegallery.co.uk.
PAGE 35.
semele (2004)
cassia (2010)
alison lambert PAGE 36.
PAGE 37.
WEd 1ST JUN / pLUG LIVE pRESENTS AT THE FORUM
SpARROW ANd THE WORKSHOp
SAT 16TH JUL / SOUNdCLASH pRESENTS...
SEARCHING 4 EVIdENCE
THE LEGION + KIdS WITH RAdIOS + WE dIG FOR FIRE + TOTALITY
FRI 3Rd JUN / SOUNdCLASH pRESENTS...
ELEpHANT KEYS THE SALVO + SLOW pINES + dAN WILLIAMSON SAT 4TH JUN
AGGRO SANTOS
WEd 7TH SEp / pLUG LIVE pRESENTS AT THE FORUM
THE WILd MERCURY SOUNd
JACK WEST
FRI 10TH JUN
REd SNAppER
SAT 17TH SEp / SOUNdCLASH pRESENTS...
THE TIVOLI
THE RATELLS + MORE TO BE CONFIRMEd
SAT 11TH JUN
MARTYN JOSEpH & BANd WEd 15TH JUN / pLUG LIVE pRESENTS AT THE FORUM
THE MILK SARAH MAC
SAT 18TH JUN / SOUNdCLASH pRESENTS...
JACKSON CAGEd
VELOZITY + THE RECROOTS + LORd JESTER + CHAYSER FRI 24TH JUN
SAT 24TH SEp / SOUNdCLASH pRESENTS...
pISTOLA KICKS MON 3Rd OCT
YOUNG LEGIONNAIRE FRI 21ST OCT
WRETCH 32
KATE JACKSON GROUp THE MONICANS SAT 29TH OCT / SOUNdCLASH pRESENTS...
THE VIOLET MAY
WEd 29TH JUN / pLUG LIVE pRESENTS AT THE FORUM
RANdOM IMpULSE SAT 9TH JUL / SOUNdCLASH pRESENTS...
THE LAST STANdING PAGE 38.
BLUEHEARTS + OLd WHORES OF SAN pEdRO + ROAMING SON + EMILY STANCER
SAT 3Rd dEC
WIRE WEd 14TH dEC
THE SAW dOCTORS
PAGE 39.
SOUND. The wretched odyssey of the muso. Tom Belshaw. The young boy gazed in adulate awe at the selection of fine, succulent produce on offer. He was reminded of his slightly odd obsession with raw radish and duly placed one of the rogue, pointless vegetables into his mush. As he chewed slowly on his pilfered, mustardy snack he gazed wistfully through the outdoor furnishings department of the impressive Sainsbury’s. He lamented the seasonal changes garden furniture ceaselessly endured and pondered the idea that this particular department acted as its own microcosm, intrinsically linked and yet ultimately detached from the world around it. Or at least he understood the notion of retrospect enough to think: “I don’t understand the relevance of this just now, but perhaps in the near future I’ll be able to use this nugget to make myself look interesting and witty.” Just cresting the dizzying heights of the formidable Black & Decker strimmer display he could see his raison d’going-with-mum-toMeadowhall. He ceased his attempts at untying the family pack of radishes in his sweaty grasp and shuffled forward. The diverse collection of CDs in the übermarket’s music department was impressive and no time was wasted. The hunt was on...and abruptly ceased by Sainsbury’s deft alphabetising skills. The boy’s long-suffering mother fished in her purse and produced two week’s worth of pocket money which was eagerly snatched by radish stained hands. With the transaction completed and the thrill of buying his first album all but gone, there was nothing left but for the boy to indulge in the fruits of his mother’s labour and take his first tentative steps on the path to musical enlightenment. I think, at the time, I expected a little more from All Saints’ ingeniously titled debut album All Saints, but everyone has to start somewhere and to be fair it was the logical progression from my first tape purchase, ‘Naked’ by “the white one from Eternal”, Louise. Foundations are key to building a reputable music taste and go a long way to explaining the ‘house’ analogy I’m about to start waffling on about. Think of your taste in music, if you will, as a house (N.B. don’t get confused and start thinking about your taste in house music because that is somewhat of an oxymoron). Without good foundations the facade can be a tad wobbly and uncertain. However, if the facade is shiny and new all the time it can lack character and become boring very quickly. However, openly embracing fads like pebble dashed walls makes the house seem dated and laughable. Trying to update a heavily fad-laden home could cost you dearly. Contractor fees for an evaluation alone can reach upwards of £3,000. It’s worth pointing out that at this juncture I’ve just started talking about actual houses and this bears no real relevance to my initial point. Your taste in music is 100% your own and very much a personal thing. But music is by its very nature a shared entity and your taste will always undergo overly aggressive scrutiny. Finding a balance between what you like and what others would term ‘well gay’ is intrinsic to developing a matured taste. I would quite happily spend my days listening to Glenn Miller and trance if not for the fear of being labelled a floppy wristed mincer. So what does one do? Your collection of upfront future bass music is very impressive. You have a Boomkat account and you’re going to Bestival. You’ve done all the hard work and are now a very credible neo muso. It is now that you get to enjoy the metaphorical radishes of your labour. You could rather comfortably amble along listening to your favourite Fleetwood Mac songs (or Rumours, if you will) and let Stevie Nicks’ dulcet tones be your own personal salvation, but then you’d be missing out on one of life’s most precious moments. Everyone who has belted out the lyrics to ‘The Chain’ in a five-man strong choir of their closest and most inebriated peers would agree that it’s pretty damn precious. And by precious I don’t mean kittens and dogs cuddling each other while they nap. So I lied. Your music taste is not your own. It’s the property of anyone who cares to listen and it’s only because you took that initial plunge and bought that embarrassing first album that’s it’s now something worth sharing. It’s finding out that everyone else’s real taste in music is the same as yours that makes the wretched odyssey of the muso worthwhile. The sharing of that palette between like-minded individuals makes you realise that the foundations are incredibly similar but the variation in the facade is wonderfully diverse. Knowing all the words to ‘Never Ever’ by All Saints is still well gay though. PAGE 40.
ochieng (2004)
alison lambert
PAGE 41.
LIVE. 65daysofstatic. kong. GANG GANG DANCE. WILD BEASTS.
65daysofstatic.
Kong.
gang gang dance.
Wild beasts.
6 May. Queens Social Club.
2 May. The Harley.
11 May. Ruby Lounge, Manchester.
14th May. City Hall.
Reviewer – Sam Walby.
Reviewer – Gordon Barker.
Reviewer – Imogen DeCordova.
Reviewer – Pete Martin.
Rock fans living in Sheffield have undoubtedly seen a performance or three by 65daysofstatic, but tonight was something a bit more adventurous. As part of Sensoria 2011, the four-piece decided to revisit their live soundtrack to the 1972 sci-fi film Silent Running, originally commissioned by the Glasgow Music and Film Festival back in February. Taking in their trademark energetic bursts of heaviness and unnerving near-quiet sections, the band played along to the full 90-minute feature-length, keeping the original dialogue intact.
First up tonight were Wet Nuns, the only Sheffield band on the bill. The pair have had an immense run as of late, swooning crowds new and old with their boot-stomping blues, Deep South drawl and fantastically energetic live performances. But tonight these Yorkshire hillbillies suffered from poor early attendance, a lack of crowd involvement and infuriating technical difficulties which culminated in an abrupt goodbye and Terrance throwing his guitar to the floor. A real shame, but it also shows that these boys are no longer an opening act.
After the success of 2008’s Saint Dymphna, Gang Gang Dance have been touted as serving up a perverse tropical holiday cocktail that shouldn’t taste as sweet as it does. Tonight they saunter through a mish-mash of tracks from latest offering Eye Contact. The gig is part of Future Everything Festival, although there’s nothing particularly festive about the individual performance prices and I’m still not entirely sure what the occasion is.
The Grand Ballroom, buried within the bowels of the City Hall, is an art deco masterpiece. It’s much underused as a live venue, so whenever anyone does play there it is automatically an event.
Seated in the suitably 70s Queens Social Club, I was surprisingly drawn in by the film, with its low budget robotics and penchant for wide-angle space shots, and an increasingly manic and finally stoic Bruce Dern busying himself with maintaining a large ship containing the Earth’s last nature reserves while it orbits Saturn. I suspect it might have got on my nerves without the 65days reworking, although Dern’s righteous anger when discussing nature with his shipmates was moving, if overblown and a little comic.
After a brief interlude we were introduced to These Monsters, a three-piece from Leeds. This group instantly stepped up the tempo of the evening, first showing their disgust at having to drink water then exploding into an intoxicating set. While the other two members are more than competent, most of the focus was drawn by the vocalist/guitarist, who constantly shifted back and forth in a reckless flounder adding a requisite physical presence. The live sound was not what I was expecting after listening to their latest release, mainly due to the fact that there wasn’t a saxophonist. This shifted them from the much more proggy sound on record to heavier riffage that the likes of These Arms are Snakes and High on Fire would be happy with. All in all, good high-paced rock and roll.
th
While it’s fair to say that the rescored soundtrack wouldn’t stand alone as a particularly stunning album, the intricacy and accuracy of its delivery was impressive. Loud bursts of sound accompanied explosions to the second, and intervening pieces of speech lurched along menacingly with the help of deep sub frequencies and crackles of static. Lonely piano motifs returned again and again, gradually morphing to give the audience something to keep hold of as the action unfurled on stage and on screen. Analogue synths glistened as though lifted straight from the 70s. As with all good soundtracks, it always felt like what you were hearing was only the tip of the iceberg, like at any moment something gigantic would erupt from the speakers and engulf you. If I was to find one criticism of the performance it would be that the instrumental sections were sometimes a little too separated from the plot. There were quieter sections as dialogue began, but on the whole it was four minutes of talking followed by four minutes of loudness, followed by more talking. Granted, I haven’t seen the original film, but I felt more eerie ambience was needed to allow the audio and video to stand comfortably in unison.
nd
After a bit of sound checking the stage was left bare and the crowd expectant, but none of us were expecting what appeared. A short, wellfed fellow wearing nothing but his boxers and a bizarre mask stepped on stage. As soon as we noticed he had the words “Meat” and “Balls” written on his abdomen (accompanied with crude drawings) he moved forward and began to chant “meatballs” in a shrill rhythmic fashion whilst throwing processed ham and cheese into the crowd. We were bewildered but somehow transfixed. This freakish cabaret went on for what felt like ten minutes, before the band joined him on stage and the “meatballs” man left without any explanation whatsoever, never to appear again. Kong were, for want of a better word, intimidating, physically and musically - all in red, wearing terrifying manikin masks with fixed expressions and smudged make up, the bassist just in red boxers with the set list crudely scrawled on his chest. They blitzed the room with their own brand of discomforting spazzy noise rock. Each song was preceded by confusing banter, shouts and murmurs, while the bassist and vocalist refused to blink and drank straight from a bottle of whisky. Constant energy and erratic time signatures built from a purposefully badly performed grunge-cover medley. The vocalist even pulled the drum kit apart for unsuspecting crowd members to play freely. A powerful display leaving you, like them, a dribbling nihilistic mess. Unsettling, unnerving and wholly inspiring.
PAGE 42.
th
Opening with ‘Adult Goth’, a sexy mongrel of a tune with high-pitched guitar effects on top of a bunch of club synths that makes you feel like you’re in an 80s soap in soft focus, riding in ‘pon camelback through the Sahara. Dymphna classic ‘House Jam’ is transformed into a shimmering disco number. “You know how many people have asked me about that song?” singer Lizzi Bougatsos asks playfully, referring to the scandal involving Florence and The Machine and her obvious theft of parts of the track on her smash hit single ‘Rabbit Heart’. There are hints of the carnival atmosphere that a GGD live spectacle should provide, but no band that sounds as uplifting and multifaceted as they do on record should be responsible for a gig as comparatively dull as this. Three songs in the atmosphere of the Ruby Lounge suits that of the tunes being produced as someone starts passing a bottle of tequila around the crowd. Initially punters look at it with suspicion, but eventually succumb to its lubricating effects - limbs loosen up and the spirit of Aga Doo is evoked. No one seems particularly bothered that they haven’t got Tinchy Stryder along to collaborate with them on ‘Princes’. Albeit a rough, acquired taste, Bougatsos’ purposefully out of tune vocals somehow feel more genuine, more heartfelt. In between beating on her makeshift limited snare and cymbals kit, she smiles a gappy grin and makes a sly dig in her shrill New York accent at someone sitting moodily in the corner on their computer. Fair enough. This is Manchester’s Northern Quarter after all, and what kind of a person takes a laptop to a gig? I was prepared for more visuals or perhaps some projections, but was instead provided with a bloke waving a makeshift bin bag flag around on stage and making hand signals to the crowd. He seemed like a strange novelty drunk gig goer who had stumbled from the realm of mortals into the realm of the gods. As it transpired this enigmatic revolutionary is a touring part of the band. Conveniently ending with an extended version of ‘Bebey’, the instrumental opener from Saint Dymphna, the band and audience interaction concludes on good terms. No doubt they’ll be appearing with their newly acquired Bez at festivals across the UK this summer.
Summer Camp start things off with their pretty pop confections. In front of a kitschy slideshow they play songs from last year’s Young EP. Jeremy Warmsley plays guitar and controls the backing tracks, while Elizabeth Sankey’s strong vocals initially evoke a 60s idyll, but as their brief set proceeds some 70s, 80s and contemporary influences surface. There are occasional similarities to She & Him and Slow Club, but Summer Camp have a certain knowing innocence, evidenced when Elizabeth likens the venue to Camelot or something out of Harry Potter. Perfume Genius’ Learning was one of 2010’s best albums and Seattle’s Mike Hadreas plays his bruised, deeply personal songs accompanied by an additional keyboard player who adds colour to his simple piano. The lo-fi lullabies are full of tales of substance abuse, self-harm and depression, performed with an aching sensitivity that is cracked but beautiful. Hadreas saves his best-known song ‘Mr Peterson’ - about the abusive relationship between a pupil and his teacher - until near the end, but by then the chatter from the bar has increased to an annoying level and almost drowns out the delicate web being woven on stage. Some people prefer Guinness to genius. Wild Beasts have received near-universal acclaim for their third album Smother. Since forming as a duo in 2002 as Fauve (the French term for Wild Beast), they have expanded their line-up and their palette of sounds to become one of the most interesting bands around. A great deal of attention has been focused on Hayden Thorpe’s countertenor voice, but there are other pieces to the jigsaw that are equally vital. Chris Talbot’s malleted polyrhythms provide a solid platform for the layers of voices and instruments to weave complex but complementary patterns that both intrigue and satisfy. They play songs from all three albums, highlighting the band’s growing confidence in their playing and songwriting. As the title suggests, the songs from the new album are claustrophobic and dark. They swoop then calm before breaking loose again and climaxing in a spine-tingling crescendo, while others are clammy with a brooding menace. Their lyrics tell tales of fumbling and frustration, of domination and braggadocio. The first two encores are ‘Lion’s Share’ and ‘All The King’s Men’, on which Hayden and Tom Fleming try to outdo each other with their vocal gymnastics. They seem genuinely thrilled by the obvious adulation from the crowd and reward us with a towering performance that, together with the excellent support and idiosyncratic venue, will take some beating this year.
PAGE 43.
Amon Tobin.
Efrim Manuel Menuck.
Fleet Foxes.
YOUNG MONTANA?
ISAM. Ninja Tune.
Plays “High Gospel”. Constellation.
Helplessness Blues. Sub Pop/Bella Union.
limerEnce. alpha pup records.
Reviewer - Pete Hazell.
Reviewer – Ben Dorey.
Reviewer – Adam Kay.
Reviewer – fred oxby.
The master of found sound is back. He’s still coaxing music out of machines and pushing dirt into percussion, but remains on a hiatus from drum breaks.
Efrim Manuel Menuck is perhaps not a name known to many, but over the past fifteen years it has been hard to ignore the immense influence of his projects on the musical landscape, most notably through the output of Godspeed You! Black Emperor. More recently Menuck has diversified, first as part of Thee Silver Mount Zion and the Vic Chesnutt Band and now as a solo artist. The most notable departure from Godspeed’s sound in all these varied projects was the introduction of vocals from Efrim and others. This continues in his solo work, although the album also contains some haunting instrumentals.
You can suss out Fleet Foxes before hearing a single note of their music. It only takes one look at these hirsute, be-hatted, woolly-jumpered young men to determine the kind of songs they sing. Folk songs. Fleet, foxy folk songs. With a capital F.
The debut LP by Young Montana? comes in the form of Limerence, an 11-track album on Alpha Pup Records, which has also released such luminaries as Daedalus, Free The Robots, The Gaslamp Killer and Jaga Jazzist. His rise onto such a prestigious imprint has been swift too, with this record coming only a short year after being named Mary Anne Hobb’s Favourite Unsigned Artist of 2010.
Amon Tobin, the master beatsmith, sound designer and lord of dirt, has delivered another masterpiece of imagination in the form of ISAM. Listening to this album, full of what seems like living electricity and fluid, unpredictable gestures of countless sounds, you ask “How?” Then you see some of the toys he keeps: pin-point microphones, a world of objects and a big spongy keyboard to play it all on. Tobin’s last solo album Foley Room marked a clear sidestep from his previous five, all of which focused largely on sampling from vinyl and putting his mark on beat-driven styles. Foley Room was all about field recording and using sounds from anywhere as the core ingredients. Tobin wanted to explore this traditionally high-brow method of composition and work it in a way that made people move. ISAM is a big stride in a similar direction, with the collecting, controlling and morphing of sounds taken to a new level. This is very exciting and impressive, but it seems we must wait for more of those trademark Tobin breaks. ‘Goto 10’ and ‘Bedtime Stories’ sport the most solid head-nod appeal and distorted bass, with almost (dare I say it) dubstep characteristics. But the use of the ‘D’ word merely describes the kick-snare relationship on this album. Fear not, Tobin still very much owns his sound. On first listen, I did miss his scattering drum cuts and rolling bully beats. ISAM seems to have a more lolloping feel to its percussion. ‘Mass & Spring’ and ‘Lost & found’ are full of the finest bass thumps and fractured snares around, but still allow plenty of space for the ever-present crescendos of digital rubble, folded crackles, blasts and scrapes that act like complicated wallpaper for the whole album. Too much wallpaper? Maybe for some. I think it will take some time to distinguish track from track in terms of sonic fidgeting, but it’s worth a long train journey and some big headphones to get to know it all. The cheeky, melodic side of Tobin’s production appears on ‘Kitty Cat’, with its bouncy plucked chords and childish yet eerie female vocals. Meanwhile, ‘Bedtime Stories’ is representative of his ability to make something sound innocent before putting it through the processor. If you want to be blown away by one man’s ability to take everyday sounds like light bulbs, springs and squeaky chairs, and turn them into waves of crystal clear, beautifully arranged, slightly frightening, living audio, all without feeling highbrow, then this is the album for you. If you want to hear the same person chart the edges of electronica with haunting and aggressive atmospheres, this is also perfect. If you’re looking for mighty and strange breaks made from crazy jazz drumming, it’s the Amon Tobin back catalogue for you my friend. PAGE 44.
Not one to pick snappy track names, Efrim’s opener is titled ‘Our Lady of Parc Extension and Her Munificent Sorrows’. Emerging from a bed of looping guitar layers and electronics, it showcases the saccharine euphoria Menuck has happened upon before with Godspeed, with major key vocals hiding disturbed lyrics, part folksy and part Animal Collective. The most striking element of the track is how different it sounds from most modern rock tracks, mainly due to production methods centered around analog processing, lending a hot tape warmth that creates a full, reedy sound. This quality of sound lingers in the next track, though the musical content leaps into darkness, affected voices chanting layers of lyrics like mantras over a creaking floor of electric noise, showcasing a talent for sound sculpting that goes beyond guitar trickery. By the song’s close we are approaching vintage industrial techno as the elements grow in intensity over a crescendo of four to the floor drums and distorted hiss. We are allowed a moment’s respite in the next track, which has Menuck up to his old trick of using fairly typical rock melodies but completely reworking the style of delivery. Here we are treated to slowed down electric blues, with each note floating like a lily pad on an lake of rippling delays. Exquisite. This is followed by a delicate piano and vocal arrangement titled ‘Heavy Calls And Hospitals Blues’. Though pleasant enough, this track features Efrim’s vocals in a less adulterated state than elsewhere on the album and frankly I’m not too big a fan. The second side opens with more reworkings of existing rock tropes in the excellent instrumental ‘Heaven’s Engine is a Dusty Ol’ Bellows’, before ‘Kaddish for Chesnutt’, a chilling elegy to Menuck’s late collaborator. The track opens with three minutes of simplified instrumental that slips between the major and the minor, then descends into a swarm of discordant vocal drones before the entry of another repetitive layered vocal from Efrim develops into the body of the song, all tonal elements rhythmically uniting against the lilting background of field recordings and whirling synths. ‘Chickadee’s Roar pt.2’ gives us some final moments of instrumental bliss, this time with recordings of the ocean and birdsong. It feels as if death, a looming theme in much of Menuck’s output, has been acknowledged peacefully in this song, and the final track ‘I Am No Longer A Motherless Child’ marks an affirmation of faith in new life.
Beardy weirdos they may be, but the Seattle sextet are absolute masters of their craft. Their self-titled 2008 debut was met with near-universal acclaim, and now they return with a second effort, Helplessness Blues. As before, the Foxes’ vocals are at the forefront. Their densely-layered, otherworldly harmonies at times sound more like the work of a choir of pagan monks than six guys from the Pacific north-west. It’s certainly unique - at least in music created after about 1683 - but it is never less than mesmerising. On the eerily atmospheric ‘The Plains/Bitter Dancer’, their voices echo as if bouncing off the walls of a haunted mansion. On ‘Lorelai’ they have the opposite effect: sweet and pretty, like a dawn chorus. On the booming ‘Battery Kinzie’, meanwhile, they sound like mates having a campfire singalong. You can practically hear them toasting the marshmallows. The king of the Foxes is singer-songwriter Robin Pecknold. He has a superb set of lungs, but it’s his eccentric lyrics that are his most interesting trait. His language is almost archaic - on ‘Sim Sala Bim’, he talks about someone who “ruffled the fur of the collie ‘neath the table” - but it marks him out as a true original. “Both the slave and the empress/will return to the dirt, I guess,” he shrugs on ‘Montezuma’, his voice brittle and angelic all the while. Behind him, Pecknold’s companions weave a rich musical tapestry. ‘Bedouin Dress’ is bolstered by a snaking violin line which lends it an air of exotic mysticism. Instrumental track ‘The Cascades’ is aptly-named, because its melodies sound as though they are tumbling down over one another. Over its eight dramatic minutes, ‘The Shrine/An Argument’ takes in wheezing organ, harp-like guitar and squeaking brass. The album’s centerpiece, however, is its title track. “I was raised up believing I was somehow unique,” sings Pecknold, before the galloping guitars melt away to reveal a coda that is truly triumphant. Like the album as a whole, it is a thing of outstanding, life-affirming beauty. With Helplessness Blues, Fleet Foxes have made a timeless record. Timeless because it sounds like it could have been made at any point in the last millennium, but timeless too because it is so good, so impossibly perfect, that it will probably be played well into the next one. The word ‘masterpiece’ may be a bit strong, but this album is folkin’ fantastic.
Like much so-called ‘bass’ music, Limerance draws influence from a variety of not-so-recent musical fauna like hip hop, dubstep, garage and house, melding the styles together to form an altogether modern package. Detuned vocals are woven into G-funk grooves, while pitched kick drums and LFO-ridden bass provide the backbone. The production values are high and the beat making is particularly impressive, providing interest throughout the record. Sometimes, though - as on the track ‘Hot Heathrr’, which features a very busy lead synth line - I think Young Montana? goes too far with his aesthetic, crushing too many elements into each moment. But these moments are few and far between, and in general this is a very strong debut. At his best, Montana offers sensitive melody and intriguing drum programming. ‘Mynnd’, one of my highlights of the record, combines driving beats with haunting melody to create a delicate and worthwhile listen. ‘Legwrap’, another strong one, features a distinctly catchy pitched synth and deep drums to create a complex and satisfying piece. Final track ‘Connct’ opens with an infectious synth line and a rather amusing garage rework of Tchaikovsky’s ‘Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy’, showing that there is humour here as well. While this musical melting pot does yield some impressive results, Limerence sometimes lacks enough continuity for it to really gel together. As well produced as this record may be, occasionally the melodies feel a little too off-kilter and do not complement the overall flow of the music as well as they might on a shorter record. Influences taken from the likes of Baths, Flying Lotus and Gold Panda are undeniable, and although Young Montana’s music is not necessarily original, it is worth a listen. He has occasionally missed the target with some of these tunes, but has nonetheless made a strong opening release and one with a commendable amount of depth for a 20-year-old from Coventry.
PAGE 45.
You co-run YNR records. How are things looking on that front?
Jehst.
I’m trying to simplify the label side of things - to switch the focus so I’m not trying to be the saviour of UK hip hop and take that responsibility off my shoulders. I think I’ve kind of done that since Lowlife Records collapsed and people lost interest in hip hop coming out of this country. I took it upon myself to try and maintain that legacy and take it into the future, but now I think I owe it to myself and the fans to not take five years between each album.
NOT YOUR POSTMAN. Interview by Nigel Mphisa.
When he’s not drifting across the high plains or riding in buses full of Mengi, the man some call Billy Brimstone finds time to make the odd tune or two. It’s been five years since the world last heard from William G Shields, and with new album The Dragon of An Ordinary Family due for release this month, we were excited to catch up with the man we all know as Jehst. The Dragon Of An Ordinary Family sounds fresh and has a really distinct feel. Do you have a set process when it comes to writing music? Not really. I try to let things come naturally, but obviously you have to be in some kind of routine or environment to allow that to happen. The main thing is to create space and time, so that I’m not distracted and can let things just happen. Sometimes it ends up well, other times it just becomes another loose end sitting on a hard drive or MPC. To be honest, it’s difficult making time for music, to be able to really focus without the other things that come with it, like expectations, which tend to take over.
You produced four tracks on this album. You produced all of the Underworld Epics LP in 2006 and some of the remixes on the Mengi Bus Mix Tape the following year. Do you prefer to be on the boards or the mic? In a lot of respects I prefer to be in the producer’s chair, as there is a lot less pressure. You can apply your skills and knowledge of music without having to let the world into your life, your personal space. For me it’s important that lyrics are open and personal and you get my personality shining through in what I write. That’s a much harder skill to just switch on and off. With production, because there is a process, it’s sometimes more of a release and can be less draining. They are very different, but production just lets me get through to the sound, vibe and energy of the music. Lyrics are a lot more intrusive, because of the performance aspect. Even in a studio you have to perform, and being a performer can be very difficult. However, production is a much more solitary thing. With writing you need to have people around to bounce energy and ideas off.
Do you think there’ll be a point in the future when you drop the mic altogether and concentrate fully on production? I can see that happening in the future. I do love it. I’m a fan of rap and the rappers I really consider to be artists, who I can really listen to and get into the stuff that they write. The mic is a major interest, influence and something I really love, but sometimes being in the limelight is not what you need. I don’t think I’ll ever drop it completely, but I think there is more longevity in the production side. I don’t want to be constantly gigging forever. I’m happy to do tours and I still love it, but it’s more to do with the performing aspect and actually putting yourself out there. Just producing and writing music is a pleasure. When I think of production as a concept, I think a lot of people in hip hop forget that it’s not just beat making - it involves every aspect of the production process, until you have a finished song at the end of it.
The response to the video for ‘Starting Over’ from your new album has been overwhelming. How did the idea of you as a postman come about? Firstly, big thanks to Ian Pons Jewell, who directed the video and contributed to the whole concept and psychology behind it. Also to Adam Burnet, who didn’t actually work on it but helped come up with the day job viral idea. It grew organically from conversations we were having, and the response to it validates our intentions of being a bit more artistic regardless of the song. I wanted to do something out of the box. I’m so bored of the standard music video format, especially rap videos. It’s another platform for expression and people don’t really think about videos enough. It’s too easy to fall into the trap of just making a video without any artistic intention behind it. You need something that stands up on its own, not just to advertise the song, but so it can have an impact on people.
The label is good. I think in the future we will focus on turning digital singles around quickly and bringing back vinyl. For a while vinyl became a grey area for many labels within hip hop, because of DJs going digital. But the smoke has cleared and people know that if you have a strong product, there is still a massive audience of real music lovers who want the physical product. Vinyl is still a prestigious format. I’m looking forward to taking it back to its roots, where the focus was putting out 12-inches, rather than releasing these big albums. Selling CDs and albums is working to a major label template and it’s kind of dead. I do think albums are important - I don’t want that to be taken the wrong way - but I also think some artists and labels go into the album concept for the wrong reasons. There is a lot to be said for the immediacy of singles. I think a positive side of digital music is that it’s brought that back around. It’s so easy for people to access music that there’s more focus on the song, rather than albums. With singles as well, you are writing the best song possible and releasing it to the public. In some respects it’s much more stripped down and puts a bigger emphasis on songwriting and communication with the audience.
So is this something we’ll see you focusing on? I never got into this to be in music videos. I’m not really a fan of celebrity culture, or the way the internet has turned everyone’s life into a type of celebrity culture. I mean, people’s daily lives are broadcast via Facebook and Twitter. Everything is getting to be like Hello magazine. People don’t realise this is what we’ve been sucked into. I think for creative people, in particular musicians, there is this massive pressure to be a constantly visible person. I’m from an era where you would get a mixtape and you would have no idea what the person looked like. I remember first listening to Wu Tang and other artists through mixtapes, white labels and pirate radio stations. The music really stood alone. I really miss that. It’s something people get from some kinds of electronic music, because it’s not about a frontman - it’s about a sound. I think that’s been lost from 99.9% of hip hop and I miss it.
Your career has spanned a good 11 years. What tips do you have for budding producers or emcees? Producers need to understand it goes beyond just making beats. They need to really be proactive in terms of getting a performance out of vocalists and making it as simple as possible. If you want to see results you’ve got to get out there, rather than just making beats and hoping somebody picks one of them up. Emcees need to be very aware of that. They need to know whether or not the producers they are working with are going to be able to facilitate the recording and actually get to a point where it’s a finished product. I guess they need to make sure they have good recordings, performance skill and to be very careful who they get involved with. They need to draw a line between their business and personal lives, to have an idea of what they want to get out of it and what they bring to the table. I think some people just decide they want to be in music, but what exactly do you want to do? They need to choose, otherwise you just get dragged along and swept away. It’s very easy to lose focus and direction, even when you have a strong identity. It’s very easy for people to manipulate or overly influence. Also, if you don’t want to have any part in the business side, you want to consider if you should put your music out there for the public or if it’s something you want to keep to yourself.
Are there any upcoming releases and future talent to look out for on YNR? Micall Parknsun is in the studio now making his new album, with a working title of Me, Myself and Akai. An album I produced for Kashmere is coming out before the end of the year. There’s an upcoming Telemachus 7-inch. Jyager is working with the band Polar Bear - I can definitely see him going a long way.
What are you listening to at the moment? I’m not getting a lot of time to listen to music actually, because with the album coming out I seem to be constantly at meetings, interviews and shows. I have less time to listen to music, which is something that pains me. Music is what I love, and if I had my way I’d probably just sit around the house flicking through records. I have made a conscious effort to listen to new hip hop, as I was starting to feel like there wasn’t a lot I could relate to. I started falling out of love with it a little bit, but the new Pharaohe Monch album is good. I’ve been listening to a lot of older stuff, whatever I pull out of the crate on that day. It could be Donald Byrd, King Tubby or a nameless white label Polish jazz record. I’m still trying to keep that crate digging mentality, because I think it’s an important part of hip hop, especially on the production side. It’s hard with new music. There is stuff I’ve made a point of checking out, like the new Jamie Woon album, but I’m always back-tracking to old stuff. Recently I’ve been getting into Mulatu Astatke and Arthur Verocai. Kidkanevil’s Basho Basho is a dope album. I mean, when he first came out he was very much on the hip hop side of things, but that album is very much in its own category. I couldn’t really put it in a genre. He is just doing his thing. He’s an anomaly in the sense that he just goes with what he feels. It’s nice to see someone whose career is building and there seems to be no pressure to conform, replicate or fall into formulaic processes. He just comes up with something fresh every time and it’s always a progression. That’s the mark of a true artist. It’s that art vs. commercialisation situation, where there’s always pressure to conform to what your fan base expect, like when Bob Dylan went electric. He got such a backlash when he tried to make that change.
immersion (2001) alison lambert
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Under The Stars. An expanding constellation. Interview by M.D.J.
Everyone has walked passed it. It’s a certain doorway on Carver St, just past Freshmans and Babylon, but just before Walkabout, right on the corner. It is commonly used as a brief shelter and haven, a temple to pray to the black cab god on a late and rainy night. A close and trusted source tipped me off that as opposed to being a drunken clubbers’ cave, it was actually the HQ of a growing force in social music development, and like Pavlov’s dog with that ringing still in my ears, I sprang straight into action to check it out and get involved.
From a one-off club night, how much has Under the Stars grown? We now hold four successful nights a year at The Hubs in the city centre, with an average attendance of around 600. Since 2010, we have also been organising monthly Under the Stars nights in other parts of South Yorkshire, running clubs and events in Doncaster, Barnsley and Rotherham. These are all proving really popular.
After a number of weeks of volunteering I met with Christine and Ruth, who were more than happy to talk about their organisation.
All our DJs are people with a learning disability and the live music acts at the nightclub provide a showcase for talent from within the community as well.
In a nut shell, who are you and what do you do?
How is the organisation run?
We are Star Enterprise Work and Play, which is a social enterprise and a limited company based in Sheffield. The organisation is driven by people with learning disabilities. We run club nights called Under the Stars and regular music workshops called Reach 4 the Stars. It’s a place to work and socialise in a safe environment.
We have a strong and enthusiastic board of directors, and key roles are shadowed by a person with a learning disability. There are also two family carers on the board. We are fortunate to have a loyal and committed bank of volunteers who support at the nights and fundraising events.
What are the aims and values of the group? Providing and nurturing supportive relationships. Our events and workshops help people with learning disabilities to socialise, have fun, meet up with old friends and make new ones. We also aim to empower and enable people with learning disabilities, offering them a voice, which in turn increases confidence and independence. Finally we work to challenge barriers, to create a strong and sustainable community to support people with learning disabilities. We want to continue to raise awareness and model good practice. How does an organisation like this start out? It all started when a group of like-minded people who were working with people with learning disabilities in the voluntary and public sector got together to run a one-off nightclub in Sheffield. People were tired of having to travel as far away as Leeds, Nottingham and Manchester to go for a night out. We set ourselves up as a community group and a management committee was formed in 2006. We had a small amount of start-up funding from Sheffield City Council and opened a bank account. The first club night was very successful and people were asking when the next one was. From the beginning, people with learning disabilities have been involved every step of the way. We had a competition to come up with the name and design the logo. The name Under the Stars was chosen and the first event was held in 2007.
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A quarter of our income is generated through our club nights and workshops, which is all reinvested into developing the organisation further. Tell us more about these other activities... We now co-ordinate music and entertainment for events run by Sheffield City Council and other organisations to increase learning disability awareness. Last year we launched a creative workshop programme running sessions in dance, music and DJing, in conjunction with Musical Works, an arts education agency. They are experienced in providing creative activities and workshops across South Yorkshire. The tutors leading the Reach 4 the Stars workshops have over 30 years combined experience delivering workshops and are all musicians themselves. What about future plans? After the success of last month’s event with Martyn Ware from Heaven 17, we are planning more club nights and are also running an Under the Stars stage at this year’s Tramlines Festival. This will happen at the Hubs on Saturday 23rd July and we will be showcasing talent from the North’s learning disability community, as well as our own musicians and DJs. We also have a resident band at Reach 4 the Stars who have named themselves The Stars. They are developing their skills in songwriting and live performances, playing original material and covers like ‘Creep’. They have also produced and edited a music video that is now online. For more information about Star Enterprise Work and Play club nights, events, workshops and volunteering, visit underthestars.org.uk.
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FILMREEL.
FILMREEL. SPLICED MEMORIES – PART 1.
This month’s Filmreel focuses on the art of film editing. Entire books have been successfully (and comprehensively) written about the subject, but I’ve chosen to ‘cut the matter’ into two basic parts, Image & Sound, presenting the first of the two in this issue and leaving the second for next month. The approach to the subject could take many forms, but I do not want to alienate anyone who lives comfortably outside the confines of this laboriously intense process (which would be the vast majority of you, readers). For that reason, I have chosen to offer you a personalised insight into this most crucial side of filmmaking. It’s what Stanley Kubrick said is “the only aspect that truly belongs to film”, everything else being borrowed from other art forms. Also, for the sake of coherence, I decided to intersperse knowledge from a selection of film editors and directors that I admire with key entries from the production diary of my own latest project. Saturday, 23rd April 2011/WHDE Diary Entry Post-Production of the pilot episode of the web series ‘Where Her Dreams End’ begins – with the long process of capturing and logging the footage. Despite the ‘not so problematic’ shoot, this is the point at which any certainty you might’ve had goes out of the window. You’re confronted with what you actually have to work with. All the compromises that took place during production jump at you like a flock of nervous crows. Over ten years of professional experience in editing is suddenly worth nothing in the face of those uneven blows of fixed reality. The challenge to bring them closer to your original intention (to what it was supposed to be) hence begins... When elaborating on the dynamics of his partnership with editor Walter Murch, the late Anthony Minghella described something along the lines of meeting him at the beginning of post-production and being told: “Now I’m going to show you the film you actually made. Not the one that you have in your head.” This is a distinction that soon arises and that any good filmmaker needs to find the discernment and humility to acknowledge. You’ve emerged from the battlefield that is the shoot with the material you managed to attain. For every successful scene there will always be a shot that, for some reason, falters and might compromise everything. Having originally trained as an editor – probably the most important skill a director should have – I can make decisions when filming and directing actors which will always be informed by ‘how well it will cut later’. But you are, most of the time, working with human beings and relying on them to deliver as agreed or necessary. Monday, 25th April 2011/WHDE Diary Entry Echoes of the Revolution that most defines where I come from will always visit me on this date, but as someone born after the fact, I just let the imagery of red carnations in the barrels of guns seep through and focus on this fresh footage in front of me. Fabricated memories which bear little resemblance to what went on during production are gradually eroded from my mind. I assemble them with enthusiasm and renewed curiosity - trying to push away the fear of that certainty. The fear of what cannot be avoided: that final montage sequence will never cut together. For the first time in my career, I will have to go back and shoot new material... The words of Julia Juaniz, editor of Carlos Saura’s films, couldn’t be clearer when she says: “I don’t think that digital technology should have any influence on editing. It’s just a question of comfort. Technology neither makes the technician nor the artist.” That makes me think of the paradise that was my solitary confinement in the editing suites of Psalter Lane Campus (cutting on film by means of a Steenbeck) and of how the transition to digital was crowned by a silent pledge to myself to keep the process as physically tangible as possible, to only allow for the ‘comfortable’ advantages of the nonlinear to be subservient to the strict simplicity of my method, and nothing else. PAGE 50.
DISOWNING YOUR OWN.
Thursday, 28th April 2011/WHDE Diary Entry Restlessness. I pace backwards and forwards in my hot editing studio. Feel like a caged wild animal forced into rational thinking, when I know by now that intuition should always prevail when cutting. I glance once in a while at individual frames of the material, which in turn ‘sits’ within the software - roughly edited yet glaring back patiently... I’m reassured by the fact that, when played through, the edit tells the entire story in visual terms. As it should, first and foremost. I set aside concerns about the additional material still to be filmed and I’m able to look afresh at certain moments. Time, as comprised in them, speaks to me clearly with a sense of promise that can after all be fulfilled. Refuting the basic notion of ‘montage cinema’ that a film was made at the editing table, developed and championed by his fellow Russian filmmakers Kuleshov and Eisenstein, the great Andrei Tarkovsky wrote: “Editing brings together shots which are already filled with time, and organises the unified living structure inherent in the film.” The way I see it, an editing process which is too adventurous can very easily corrupt the essence of what was so uniquely captured between the words ‘Action’ and ‘Cut’. If you’ve done your job well as a director, pursued your goal unrelentingly but remained open to ‘lucky accidents’, then your footage just needs a little push when you reach the editing stage. Wednesday, 4th May 2011/WHDE Diary Entry Humanity – or a truthful representation of it – is invariably what I’m after in what I do. Yet with humanity comes uncertainty... ambiguity... imperfection...These human beings that I look at now, that I selected to inhabit these characters in ‘very real time’, they all come with their own memories... associations... shortcomings...Working towards a fine cut, I pay close attention to those moments towards the end of a given shot or sequence. “Yes, you are more truthful to yourself there, a little bit later, but I’m going to cut you here, before that unfortunate blinking. When your emotion was more at the service of the scene...” In perfect correlation to this, there’s the theory developed by Walter Murch in his book In the Blink of an Eye, which he would later recollect as such; “I became convinced that there was a connection between the patterns of a person’s eye blinks and the patterns of their thoughts. That blinks are the equivalent of mental punctuation marks (...) separating and thus providing greater articulation to our thoughts. (...) The upshot of all this is that I believe the pattern of cuts in a film, to be at its best, needs to reflect or acknowledge the pattern of thoughts of the characters in the film – which ultimately means the thought patterns of the audience.” My personal approach tends to establish a further connection between this notion and another aspect of the film language; thoughts being the filtered surface of the subconscious, which in turn is subjective and can be expressed in the most subtle of ways by means of sound design. This will form Part 2 of this article in next month’s Filmreel. Essential Reading: The Conversations – Walter Murch and the art of Editing Film by Michael Ondaatje. Fine Cuts – The Art of European Film Editing by Roger Crittenden. Sculpting In Time by Andrei Tarkovsky.
13 Assassins. Director – Takashi Miike. Reviewer – Alex Keegan. A brief foray into cult director Takashi Miike’s oeuvre can leave the uninitiated feeling slightly dumbfounded. I first came across Miike after embarking on the first of many Japanese movie binges, in which I encountered the unrelenting, sado-masochistic madness of Ichi the Killer, the story of a perverted social outcast who is conditioned to chop up people on command using razor blades implanted in his heels. I came away from the experience jaded by the swaggering gratuitousness of it all, but it is the unpredictable, taboo-defying bravado that has since caused me to track down countless Miike’s films, all as weird and brutal as the next. His latest, 13 Assassins, shows a departure from the director’s surreal Yakuza-obsessed past for which he is renowned, instead channelling the spirit of Kurosawa into a historical samurai epic which seems to show Miike at a mature, refined peak. The story is all too familiar to those who have grown up with Japanese chanbara cinema such as the Lone Wolf & Cub and Zatoichi series and, of course, the mighty Seven Samurai. So nothing new – a district plagued by a tyrannical Lord summons a group of samurais to dispose of their murderous despot – but it’s Miike’s masterful approach that helps this film stand out from other crowd-pleasing samurai blockbusters. The tone is one of existential crisis. In a time of peace samurais are no longer required by their masters. Most feel lost and inconsequential, so when given the opportunity to die an honourable samurai’s death all leap at the chance with valour. Miike is renowned for his innovative pacing, in particular the nonsensical whims he will happily thrust into a conventional storyline to create something otherworldly and surreal. The obvious example is the haunting Audition, which masquerades itself as a romantic-comedy only to transform into some sort of nightmarish-torture tale in the final 20 minutes. With 13 Assassins, Miike takes a more traditional approach, subverting much of the expectations that surround him as a director. If he wants to make one thing clear, it’s that he has no problem with the proven template of samurai epics. They work for a reason and that’s because they all build up to an overblown, climactic fight scene. And with this latest instalment, the film delivers. The final 45 minutes are utter carnage, leaving the quiet town in which the conflict ensues awash with blood. But this film is by no means of the Kill Bill type. The fighting is gritty but never over the top, unless you take into account some tactics used: rabid flaming pigs, gratuitous pyrotechnics and giant mechanical fences fashioned from twigs – all flourishes of Miike’s past. The samurais themselves are endearing and the sense of moral camaraderie as they pursue the perfect warrior’s death is unapologetically archaic. Some of the most enjoyable scenes consist of the assassins on the way to battle, discussing their mortality and the resignation one must exercise in the wake of fate. Almost an acknowledgement of the inevitable ending that comes with chanbara films of this ilk, the audience receives reassurance from the characters that we’ll get the bloody crescendo we’ve come to expect.
In the Blink of an Eye: A Perspective on Film Editing – Revised 2nd Edition by Walter Murch. whereherdreamsend.blogspot.com JOÃO PAULO SIMÕES IS A PORTUGUESE FILMMAKER LIVING AND WORKING INDEPENDENTLY IN SHEFFIELD. HIS WORKS INCLUDE ANTLERS OF REASON AND AN ARRAY OF MUSIC VIDEOS AND DOCUMENTARIES. VISIT CAPTURAFILMES.BLOGSPOT.COM. tobias (2004)
alison lambert
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FAV0URITES. OUR PICK OF THE BUNCH.
The Crucible.
THE RIVERSIDE.
the Bath hotel.
The Riverside Bar is increasingly a popular choice for Sheffield’s discerning beer drinkers and creatives. While the British ‘summer’ may not always be our friend, the Riverside’s large outside garden area overlooking the river approaches perfection for that heatinfused afternoon of drinking with mates.
We return this month to our recent tradition of championing this city’s excellent real ale pubs, with the attention turned this time to the Bath Hotel in town.
1 Mowbray Street. 0114 2724633.
The Riverside is the only 100% charity owned pub in Sheffield. As a result it keeps its prices low and its eyes on quality over quantity. You’ll find no identikit lagers or stony faced Wetherspoons henchmen in here. The pub is owned by Sheffield-based non-profit PointBlank, who are committed to promoting local arts, music and creative activities. With this in mind, the Riverside opened its Shoe Box exhibition and live music space in the second storey of the pub. Home to such varied Sheffield champions as Singing Knives, Noise Upstairs and Signposts, among many others, this is an intimate space ideal for convening small communities of likeminded folk. In the bar downstairs, you’ll find a rotating weekly menu of beers, real ales and ciders hailing from all over the country, alongside large but affordable plates of quality pub food for soaking it all up with. Feel free to ask for a small taster of the draught beers on offer free of charge, so you can find the perfect sup. The downstairs bar area also plays host to a variety of regular live performance events, from the intimate Opus Acoustics every Thursday to live reggae and local DJ collectives at weekends. Worth noting in your diary this month is the annual Riverside Arts and Music Festival on 11th-12th June, which will feature live performances from a variety of Sheffield bands as well as arts and crafts stalls, workshops and activities for the kids. The event is free and there will be a BBQ with locally sourced produce throughout, so bring the family down and make a day of it. Our final word of Riverside advice is to check out the Phlegm mural commissioned recently by the pub. It covers the wall at the bank of the river, below the outside seating area. You’ll catch it best from the bridge. Not a pub to be missed, but certainly one to be enjoyed.
66 Victoria Street. 0114 249 5151.
It is a common misconception that real ale is something that is confined to the cluster of cracking boozers in the Kelham Island area and a few locals spattered around the peripheries of town. In fact, this unassuming establishment is situated in a spot that thousands of people walk past every day without knowing it. Just a stone’s throw from the hubbub of West Street, the Bath Hotel is a welcoming sanctuary for those looking to ditch the toxic glow of blue WKD for an altogether more civilised bevvy. With a lovely atmosphere, friendly locals and not a glaring plasma screen in sight, the Bath is a great alternative to what we often associate with city centre drinking. Sheffield produces a vast number of ales and they can be found all over the city, but where the Bath differs is in its choice of regional beers from neighbouring areas. They stock craft ales from the likes of Barnsley, Nottinghamshire and Lancashire, with the pump clips changing regularly, demonstrating the many benefits of being an independent free house. The pub is run by Brian Johnson, a man described to us by a woman of good authority as “Sheffield’s nicest publican”. No small accolade, but having met the man himself it’s hard to disagree. When talking about his place and the ales he offers it was clear that he is all you could hope for in a landlord, with an understated passion for his wares and a love for hospitality.
Wilkinson st physio.
55 Norfolk St. 0114 249 5999. 23rd June – 16th July.
81 Wilkinson St. 0114 276 1997. wilkinsonstpysio.co.uk
It is a rare occasion that we have cause to print consecutive features on the same place, but in this case we have very good reason. Following his successes directing Enemy of the People and the David Hare classic Racing Demon, Sheffield Theatres Artistic Director Daniel Evans this time stars in the regional premiere of Alexi Kaye Campbell’s critically-acclaimed debut The Pride.
The often daunting prospect of receiving treatment that requires you to disrobe and be manhandled by a stranger is only made worse by the bleak backdrop of a hospital ward.
The Pride was produced for the Royal Court Theatre Upstairs, winning The Critics’ Circle Prize for Most Promising Playwright, the John Whiting Award for Best New Play and an Olivier Award for outstanding achievement in an affiliate theatre. Alongside Daniel’s Oliver, The Pride sees the return of Claire Price as Sylvia and Jamie Sives as Philip, both no strangers to the hallowed Crucible boards. Advance tickets are available online and at the box office. This is one not to be missed.
kuji.
Enter Wilkinson Street Physio. From the moment we were welcomed through the door it felt more akin to the living room of a country house than a clinic. It also quickly became clear from chatting with Physiotherapist Thomas Mitchell that the patients here are a lucky bunch. The team go to great lengths to ensure that every person is treated with care and respect, tailoring each programme of treatment to the individual’s needs. The team are all internationally renowned practitioners with exactly the right attitude to their work, so give them a call and have that nagging pain melt away in style.
doc/fest.
405 Ecclesall Rd. 0114 268 3822. kujishop.co.uk
8th – 12th June. Showroom Box Office: 0114 275 7727. sheffdocfest.com
We have been working with the wonderful Kuji for well over a year now and so we thought it about time for a frankly well overdue update of the goings on in probably the coolest shop in the world.
Sheffield Doc/Fest is the UK’s biggest documentary event, hosting scores of films, interviews, Q&A sessions and talks with key industry figures. Previously held in November, it has now been moved to the slightly sunnier month of June. During the second week of the month, Doc/Fest will put on 79 feature films, 28 shorts, eight cross-platform films, two surprise screenings and one installation in venues like the Showroom, Hallam Hubs, the Lyceum, the Crucible, the Odeon and Devonshire Green.
Kuji and Now Then are in many ways kindred spirits. Each month, they host a different featured artist in their window display. They support local artists by stocking their wares in store. They believe that integrity, quality and independence are the cornerstones of anything worth doing. Evolution is the real key word when describing Kuji, with the shop and its online counterpart constantly being tweaked and improved. Their latest venture features a unique range of affordable t-shirts designed by emerging artists under the banner of TeeBag. Each design is a strictly limited edition, so get on it sharpish.
There is far, far too much to mention here, but go and see the new Werner Herzog film, Cave of Forgotten Dreams, on Dev Green on 11th June. Visit the site for more details and order tickets at the Showroom.
singing knives.
pv workshop.
Singing Knives Records are putting on gigs all over the place at the moment, but the next instalment will bring Bradford’s psychedelic finest The Family Elan to the Riverside on Mowbray Street for the princely sum of just four quid. Drawing inspiration from age-old Azerbaijani traditions, as well as more contemporary influences, this one is bound to knock your socks off. Support comes from Argentinian noise mentalist Eye, and Very Rich Lexicon from Hull.
For those of you who are thinking of buying solar panels or are simply interested in the application of photovolataics, this is the event for you. Find answers to your queries about set up costs, income benefits and reducing your carbon footprint courtesy of the University of Sheffield Solar Farm project.
10th June, 8pm. The Riverside. £4 (£3 concs).
30th June. The Edge Conference Facility. sheffieldsolarfarm.group.shef.ac.uk
Pop in and say hello and be greeted like a friend of many years.
If you haven’t had enough, their gig on 9th July will host Part Wild Horses Mane On Both Sides, Helhesten, Zweiters and White Death.
Workshops run between 10am and 5pm, with an evening session between 7pm and 9pm. The day will give attendees the opportunity to talk to potential suppliers and independent experts. Also in appearance will be a keynote speaker from the Fraunhofer Institute in Germany. For more information or to register your interest, email solarfarm@ shef.ac.uk
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A Sheffield Theatres Production
See the English Regional première of this Olivier Award-winning play, directed by Richard Wilson and starring Artistic Director and double Olivier award-winner Daniel Evans.
END. YOU HEARD.
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Thu 23 June – Sat 16 July Box Office 0114 249 6000 sheffieldtheatres.co.uk drusus(2010)
Sheffield Theatres Trust is a Registered Charity No. 257318 and is a company limited by guarantee No. 932254. Sheffield Theatres Crucible Trust is a Registered Charity No. 1120640 and is a company limited by guarantee No. 6035820. City of Sheffield Theatre Trust is a Registered Charity No. 1121284 and is a company limited by guarantee No. 6308382.
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KEY.
1
= SHEFFIELD REAL ALES HOUSES & BREWERIES.
2 3
CROOKES/CROOKESMOOR. 1
7
9 10 11
WE
ST
STR
GARDENERS REST KELHAM ISLAND TAVERN THE RIVERSIDE BAR 18 BIKES EDGE CONFERENCE FACILITY THE RISING SUN THE HARLEQUIN HEARTBREAK THEATRE
EET
CITY CENTRE. 20
<5
1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8.
6 21
<4
8
9. WILKINSON STREET PHYSIO 10. SHEFFIELD UNIVERSITY 11. THE HARLEY 12. THE RED DEER 13. THE BATH HOTEL 14. RARE & RACY 15. SUE CALLAGHAN BOOK BINDER 16. COLLARD MANSON 17. THE OLD HOUSE 18. CORPORATION 19. THE PLUG 20. SHEFFIELD THEATRES 21. THE RUTLAND ARMS ECCLESALL ROAD. 22. KUJI 23. MISH MASH
27
SHARROWVALE ROAD. 24. 25.
MONTH OF SUNDAYS GALLERY PORTER BOOKS
LONDON ROAD.
28
26. 27.
29
CAFE EURO ABBEYDALE BREWERY
NETHEREDGE. 28. 29.
S7 ELECTRICAL THE OLD SWEET SHOP
12
13
22
26
23
14
15 17
16
18
25 24 19
PAGE 56.